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Importers of cocoa into Europe are flouting European Union laws by selling beans from deforested African land while mislabelling its origins.
A new report lists cocoa merchants as fuelling the felling of trees in Liberia while disguising the beans as originating from neighbouring Cote d’Ivoire. Liberia, one of the countries in Africa still recovering from civil war, has struggled to replant trees, most of them cut down during the conflict two decades ago.
And, while agribusiness has been encouraged to tackle both poverty and land rehabilitation, cutting down trees for cocoa farming violates EU laws on environment and business.
Of late, the EU has been putting clauses in various trading agreements to focus on conservation for all businesses directly engaging with the European markets.
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Yet the report by an Ivorian NGO known by its French acronym IDEF is calling on EU officials and governments of affected African nations to work on cocoa certification schemes that prevent illegal exploitation of African farmers, one of the largest bloc of cocoa producers in the world.
IDEF, in the paper released at a major event in Brussels on April 22, said that companies involved in the illegal acts in Cote d’Ívoire are promoting destruction of forests in Liberia, and called on the EU to take appropriate action to stop the malpractices.
IEDF says that the traceability mechanisms used by these companies are flawed and do not comply with the new anti-deforestation regulations of the EU published on June 9, 2023.
The group calls for the existing mechanisms to be replaced with robust and transparent national traceability system in place in Côte d’Ivoire. Current traceability systems were set up by the chocolate companies and are controlled by them. Campaigners say these are not transparent, and are also flawed.
“The cocoa industry has pledged to end deforestation, but our investigation shows that this is still not happening.
“EU regulation on deforestation represents a historic opportunity to finally honour the commitment,” said Bakary Traoré, IDEF executive director, and the report’s main author. – The East African
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