In 2017, an investigation by the environmental campaigning group, Mighty Earth led to the release of “Chocolate’s Dark Secret” - a report which alleged that a large amount of the cocoa used in chocolate produced by Mars, Nestle, Hershey’s, Godiva, and other major chocolate companies was grown illegally in national parks and other protected areas in Ivory Coast and Ghana. The countries are the world’s two largest cocoa producers. The report documents how in several national parks and other protected areas, 90% or more of the land mass has been converted to cocoa. 

Company comments in response to the report findings are included below. 

Following the report, at the UN’s 2017 conference on climate change in Bonn, the cocoa and chocolate companies responsible for the purchase of 80% of west Africa’s cocoa promised to end forest destruction. 

Despite the chocolate industry’s pledge to cease sourcing cocoa linked to deforestation, a 2018 Mighty Earth report has found that deforestation in West Africa for cocoa has continued, and in some cases has increased. The report, Behind the Wrapper: Greenwashing in the Chocolate Industry, identifies deforestation hotspots, including in protected areas and national parks, putting some of the last refuges for forest elephants and chimpanzees at risk and threatening the stability of the regional climate.