REPORT COCOA
Addressing challenges in the cocoa sector
The Voice Network organisation has published the 2020 Cocoa Barometer report, highlighting that challenges in the cocoa sector are “as large as they have ever been”. The publication outlines necessary steps governments and industry should take to end deforestation and human rights abuse in cocoa supply chains. Kennedy’s explores.
A s a biennial review of
sustainability in the cocoa sector, the 2020 Cocoa Barometer report provides stark details of how little positive impact current and past
interventions are having for the farmers at the beginning of the supply chain. This latest update on the sector has highlighted that “20 years into rhetoric” the challenges remain “as large as ever”. It stresses that poverty is still rife for most of (if not all) West African cocoa farmer families, child labour is still a serious problem and that old growth forests “continue to be cleared to make way for cocoa production”. Thanks to campaigning civil society organisations, the last two years have seen an increasing number of chocolate companies
asking for regulation; significant global actors like the EU are committed to putting legislation in place; and the world’s two largest producers of cocoa, Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana, have formed a cartel to drive up the price for cocoa farmers.
Cocoa Barometer co-author Antonie C. Fountain of the VOICE Network, commented: “After two decades of voluntary initiatives that do not tackle the root causes, it is time for systemic change in the sector. All the ingredients are there to make it work, but it is now time to move forward, and put in place ambitious, holistic and mandatory change, so that we can finally tackle the poverty, child labour and deforestation in cocoa.” The report finds that the last two decades of interventions have failed for three main reasons. The first is that efforts have been voluntary and not mandatory, meaning many across the sector are failing to do what is needed. In addition, there are no penalties for noncompliance from governments or enforcements to meet targets. However, those at the bottom – cocoa farmers often living below the poverty line – do lose their sustainable cocoa certification if they do not comply. The report author’s state: “Whilst we’ve seen a significant increase in regulatory processes and commitments to due diligence, they are limited without accountability, transparency and equitable enforcement.”
16 Kennedy’s Confection December 2020
“We are at the crossroads. Do we continue skirting around the
issue of farmers wellbeing, or will all stakeholders together radically redesign value distribution and decision making in the cocoa sector?”
KennedysConfection.com
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