Chocolate: Costing the Earth
by Thomas Gomersall
With forest fires continuing to rage across the Amazon rainforest, the issue of the environmental impacts of animal agriculture has gained greater prominence. But another common food commodity, chocolate, is also a major contributor to tropical deforestation.
Far from the supermarket confectionary aisles, the vast majority of chocolate’s core ingredient, the cocoa bean, is grown in the West African nations of Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) and Ghana. As the name of the former country suggests, this region was once a haven for forest elephants, which along with chimpanzees, gorillas, pangolins, pygmy hippos and many other species, formed one of the richest biodiversity hotspots in Africa. Today, clearing for open-air cocoa plantations has destroyed nearly all of its formerly extensive rainforests, including many in protected areas, from which 40 per cent of Ivorian cocoa is sourced (Higonnet et al, 2017).
The ecological devastation this has caused is immense. A 2015 study of 23 Ivorian protected areas found that 13 had lost all of their primate species thanks to their near-total conversion (over 90 per cent of land mass in some areas) to cocoa plantations (Bitty et al, 2015). As forest fragments get smaller and smaller, animals like forest elephants — of which just 200 to 400 remain in Cote d’Ivoire today — become easier for poachers to find and kill (Higonnet et al, 2017). There are serious climate implications here too. Chocolate production through deforestation emits more carbon than some forms of beef farming (Poore & Nemecek, 2018) and the destructive practices used in West Africa are also being used in other cocoa-producing rainforest nations such as Indonesia and Peru (Higonnet et al, 2017).
Complicating efforts to tackle deforestation is the fact that a lot of West African cocoa is produced illegally on small plots of land by individual farmers, making it harder to trace its source or assess farming practices (Maclean, 2018). Worse still, most major chocolate companies are continuing to buy such cocoa in full awareness of its environmental impact, even after signing a pledge in 2017 to end cocoa-related deforestation (Higonnet et al, 2017; Maclean, 2018).
The widespread use of West African cocoa is also driving serious human rights abuses. An estimated 2.1 million children currently work as slaves on cocoa plantations, performing dangerous, physically demanding work harvesting cocoa beans. Even when farmers are paid, they receive only 6.6 per cent of the profits of the average chocolate bar while the lions share goes to chocolate companies and retailers. To put that into context, a cocoa farmer in Cote d’Ivoire earns roughly 50 cents per day and in Ghana, 84 cents per day (Higonnet et al, 2017).
However, not all chocolate is created equal. Responsible chocolate production does exist, such as agroforestry schemes in which cocoa is grown in the shade of native trees, preventing deforestation. Agroforestry also uses less water and causes less soil erosion and degradation than conventional cocoa farming. WWF works to support and promote such schemes both to curb deforestation and to improve the lives and incomes of farmers, such as the indigenous cocoa-growing communities of Ecuador’s Cuyabeno Reserve (Rivas, 2019).
Indigenous people and small producers aren’t the only ones paying attention to the need for more environmentally friendly chocolate. According to the environmental advocacy organisation, Mighty Earth, a few mainstream companies like Lindt are making real efforts to improve the traceability of their cocoa, promote agroforestry, reduce deforestation and promote reforestation (for more details, see Mighty Earth’s Buyer’s Guides for Environmental Chocolates).
Yes, chocolate can be bad for the environment. But it doesn’t have to be. And by being better informed as to where the cocoa in it was sourced from and rewarding companies that are making an effort to improve their practices, we as consumers have a lot of power to change this.
References:
· Bitty, E.A., Bi, S.G., Koffi Bene, J.C., Kouassi, P.K. and W.S. McGraw. 2015. Cocoa farming and primate extirpation inside Cote d’Ivoire’s protected areas. Tropical Conservation Science, vol. 8(1): 95pp.–113pp.
· Higonnet, E., Bellantonio, M. and G. Hurowitz, Chocolate’s Dark Secret, Washington DC, United States of America, Mighty Earth, 2017. http://www.mightyearth.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/chocolates_dark_secret_english_web.pdf (Accessed: 4 September 2019).
· Maclean, R. ‘African cocoa industry failing on deforestation pledge-campaigners’. The Guardian, 7 December 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/07/africa-cocoa-industry-failing-deforestation-pledge-campaigners (Accessed: 2 September 2019).
· Poore, J., Nemecek, T. 2018. Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers. Science, vol. 360: 987pp.–992pp.
· Rivas, J., ‘Chocolate without a dark side’, WWF Ecuador [web blog], 7 July 2019, https://medium.com/@WWF/chocolate-without-a-dark-side-65f0c85ef9b0 (Accessed: 2 September 2019).
