Global Chocolate Consumption Linked to 1.5 Million Hectares of Deforestation in Africa

Statistics suggest that the deforestation of 1.5 million hectares in Africa was a result of global chocolate consumption.

The Link to Chocolate Consumption

According to scientists, the widespread consumption of chocolate is a significant factor in the eradication of West African protected forests.

Since 2000, large areas of previously dense forest had been converted into cocoa plantations in Ghana and Ivory Coast.

It was discovered that cocoa production was connected to 360,000 of the 962,000 total hectares, or roughly 37.4%, of protected areas deforested since 2000 in the Ivory Coast and 26,000 of the 193,000 total hectares, or 13.5%, of deforestation in comparable areas in Ghana.

Last year, Statista calculated that the value of the world's chocolate trade exceeded $1 trillion.

Its main component, cocoa, is made from the seed of a tropical tree called Theobroma cacao. Although it is originally from South America, the majority of it is now made in Africa, primarily in Ghana and Ivory Coast.

According to the Food Empowerment Project, an estimated 2 million farmers in West Africa who run farms with an average size of just three to four hectares each rely on cocoa for their income, which is often less than $1 per day.

The supply chain is opaque because they provide an intricate web of middlemen, including both public and private businesses, who link them to the global market.

Due to this concealment, human rights violations have flourished in the cocoa industry, and slavery has long been associated with chocolate. But the most recent studies also connect the decadent threat to biodiversity and climatic challenges that threaten the catastrophic collapse of the planet's ecology.

Deforestation in Africa

West Africa is losing its forests quickly, just as tropical areas. Ghana is believed to have lost at least 65% of its population since 1950, while the Ivory Coast has lost an estimated more than 90%. Along with mining, selective logging, and other forms of agriculture, cocoa cultivation has been highlighted as one of the major contributors to deforestation in both countries. However, it is unclear to what extent this is the case.

A multinational group of researchers used satellite imagery to precisely identify the region where cocoa is grown in deforested areas. To search through satellite data and locate cocoa farms, they trained a neural network. After verifying their findings with teams in Ghana and Ivory Coast, they then compared their findings to regions depicted on the World Database of Protected Areas.

The researchers discovered that cocoa was being produced on more than 1.5 million hectares of protected land in both nations, including approximately 14% of protected land in the Ivory Coast and 5% of protected land in Ghana. Nearly 45% of the land in forest reserve areas or some classified forest has been destroyed for cocoa farming.

According to Kwame Osei, the Rainforest Alliance's country director for both Ghana and Nigeria, poverty is the single biggest factor driving deforestation in the cocoa industry. Only 6% of the retail price of a chocolate bar is paid to cocoa growers in West Africa. They are also at the bottom of the supply chain, suffering from persistently low prices and having limited opportunities to bargain.

Osei went on to say that cocoa farmers are particularly sensitive to the effects of droughts, persistent pests, and disease since they are on the front lines of the global warming catastrophe. In turn, land degradation frequently causes forest areas, even protected areas, to be converted into new cocoa plantations, The Guardian reports.