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| Cocoa drying in the Juabeso district, Ghana/Credit: Veronique Mistiaen |
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I recently went to Ghana
to look at how cocoa farmers were adapting to and fighting the impacts of
climate change.
I loved that
assignment because Ghana is one of my favourite countries. I am also crazy
about chocolate and worry about not being able to get my daily fix. I had
read a report by the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), which predicted that increasing
temperatures will lead to massive declines in cocoa production by 2030 in Ghana
and Cote d’Ivoire, which produce more than half of the world’s cocoa. With
China and India developing an appetite for chocolate, the demand for cocoa
might then outweigh the supply.
I have looked at
commoditie across Africa and Asia in the past and reported on efforts to improve
production while giving good wages and living conditions to farmers and
protect the environment. But the project I visited in Western Ghana was different
because it focused not only on the farms, but on the whole landscape, the fallow
lands and the forests.
Once, lush
forests covered most of the country - the green of the Ghanaian flag represents
them - but over the past decades, they have been cut to make space for more
cocoa. Ghana is now the country with the fastest deforestation rate in the
world.
The loss of
forests compromises the region’s biodiversity, but also exacerbates the impact
of climate change. The country’s temperatures are slowly rising - and
cocoa trees are now under threat.
In the
Juabeso/Bia district, international environmental organization Rainforest Alliance (RA) and Olam International Ltd have teamed up to help farmers produce
what they believe is the first “climate-smart" cocoa in the world. The
$1 million three-year pilot project provides farmers in 36 communities with a
combination of proven tools and innovative practices for land management and
conservation, so that they can help reduce deforestation and climate change and
at the same time earn a sustainable livelihood.
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| Cocoa farmers at a RA training session in Eteso, Ghana/Credit: Veronique Mistiaen |
“In order to insure there is a future for
cocoa production, you need an environment that supports cocoa, otherwise cocoa
is dead,” says Atsu Titiati, RA project director in Ghana.
Read my piece for
New Agriculturist here and Economist’s Baobab blog here.
