At the November 2017 UN Climate Change Conference, the governments of the world's two main cocoa-producing countries, Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana – along with big cocoa traders and leading chocolate manufacturers including Nestlé, Hershey’s, Mondalez, and Mars – signed the Cocoa & Forests Initiative Framework for Action1. This was followed in early 2019 by the publication of detailed action plans, raising hopes that companies across the cocoa supply chain would, at last, take decisive measures to end deforestation caused by the expansion of cocoa plantations in West Africa.

But four years later, the promise of the Cocoa & Forests Initiative (CFI) remains largely unfulfilled. Through a combination of supply chain mapping, satellite data analysis, and on-the-ground field investigations, Earth has again uncovered evidence of ongoing tropical forest destruction in the key cocoa-growing regions of both Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. This includes deforestation in designated protected areas that provide vital habitats for endangered wildlife and critical carbon sinks, as well as being home to Indigenous and local communities...

Mighty Earth's findings in this report reveal : • Overall levels of forest clearance remain near record highs. • Average countrywide, historical tree cover loss in Côte d'Ivoire has been 2.3 times higher in the period since January 2019 than it was between 2001-2017, and 3.4 times higher than the average loss during the 2000s. • In Ghana, 2020 historical tree cover loss countrywide was 3.7 times higher since January 2019 than it was between 2001-2010, and 1.5 times higher than the average tree cover loss between 2011-2019...

What’s worse is that this devastation is entirely preventable. The cocoa industry could be collectively monitoring and responding to tree cover loss in cocoa-growing areas using the same tools as Mighty Earth's Cocoa Accountability Map... 

There is an urgent need for cocoa traders, buyers, manufacturers, and retailers to stop hiding behind hollow excuses and deliver the transparent public monitoring systems that have been promised since the launch of the CFI. Mighty Mighty is calling on cocoa traders chocolate companies to develop a publicly available joint monitoring system through the CFI, combining their supply chain information and overlaying it with freely available satellite data showing recent deforestation hotspots.

They then need to redouble their efforts to work with government officials to develop appropriate interventions with cocoa farmers and local communities to prevent further land clearances...[Also refers to Cargill, Barry Callebaut, Olam, Sucden, Touton, and Ecom].