Exclusive: Mighty Earth renews calls on industry to end cocoa-linked deforestation
Ivory Coast Cocoa Farming, where levels of deforestation are continuing to prove a notable problem.
The not-for-profit environmental organisation Mighty Earth has called on major players in the confectionery and cocoa sector to bring to an end industry linked-deforestation, as it publishes a fresh report on the key topic, reports Neill Barston.
As previously reported, the group was prominent among sector insiders calling for the much-debated EUDR laws targeting traceability and elimination of deforestation within supply chains for leading agricultural commodities including palm, cocoa and soy to be enacted on time.
Despite its efforts, the new legislation has been officially delayed by a year, now set to start at the end of 2025 – which Mighty Earth claimed would have a significant negative impact in terms of continuing forests loss – which it has highlighted in a fresh on the ground study in Ghana.
Notably, the West African nation has been flagged-up in recent years for enduring some of the highest comparable rates of forest loss in the world, lost through a combination of logging, cocoa farming and mining – including illegal gold mining operations known locally as ‘galamsey,’ which regional authorities have been consistently attempting to tackle. According to European Commission-based official research, between the 1950s to 2000, 2.7 million hectares, over 60% of Ghana’s primary forests had been lost.
Further research has revealed that neighbouring Ivory Coast has been similarly majorly impacted by a wide range of industrial activity, with around 80% of its natural forests having been lost in the past 50 years – which has been a prime driver of the urgency behind the EUDR laws that compel companies to declare they are deforestation free in their supply chains. The topic featured within last year’s World Confectionery Conference q & A session, with our panel noting that legislation, together with industry action remains a key priority.
As Mighty Earth stated in a recent blog, its Sweet Nothings report uncovered evidence of ongoing tropical forest loss in both Ghana and Ivory Coast, noting some of the key pledges from the 2017 Cocoa and Forests Initiative designed to stem deforestation that have remained unresolved, in spite of progress being claimed by industry regarding the flagship initiative that was recently re-launched in a 2.0 form to accelerate targeted actions.
Furthermore, as the eco-organisation stated, it produced an additional study in October 2023, Mighty Earth – its Rapid Response Deforestation Monitoring examined deforestation hotspots in Ghana, close to where traders within the cocoa sector continue to operate. Its latest efforts have centred on engaging with key companies including Barry Callebaut, Cargill, ofi, Touton, and ECOM (supplying Mars, Nestle and Mondelez), which it claimed had delivered mixed responses.
The blog stated: “In an effort to better understand the main barriers to deforestation-free supply chains, we met with the traders implicated in the report, welcoming feedback on our methodology and urging them to increase supply chain transparency.
“Based on our conversations, we sent a ‘ground-truthing’ team to Ghana’s cocoa belt in March 2024 to investigate additional forest loss alerts. The resulting, newly published report sheds light on drivers of tree cover loss within Ghana’s Krokosua Forest Reserve and Aparapi Shelterbelt. As documented in the “Company Responses” section, traders mentioned in the report responded with varying degrees of accountability: only one company has committed to publishing a public grievance log; only one company has shared their complete geospatial database of farm boundaries and GPS points with Mighty Earth; several companies did not reply when asked to comment on the traceability of their indirect supply chains.
“As of the end of 2024, forest loss rates remain stubbornly high. RADD (radar) alerts have detected over 16,000 ha of forest disturbance in Ghana’s cocoa growing regions since January 1st–the most forest loss in the region since 2020.”
