West African nations have announced a series of measures to raise the price of cocoa in order to lift farmers out of poverty, which has been linked to persistent child labour and illegal deforestation following years of unmet pledges by the industry
Ghana and Ivory Coast have expressed the need to balance cocoa farmers’ incomes with the profits made by traders and manufacturers.
In recent months Ivory Coast and
Ghana, which together produce two thirds of the world’s cocoa, have adopted
measures to alleviate poverty among cocoa growers in their countries. In June,
the two nations said they would suspend sales
of cocoa for less than $2,600 a tonne for the 2020/2021 season.
In July they introduced a
Living Income Differential of $400 a tonne to be added to the price of cocoa.
In September, to discourage overproduction and maintain higher prices, the two
countries announced mechanisms to set production
ceilings.
Ghana and Ivory Coast have
expressed the need to balance cocoa farmers’ incomes with the profits made by
large commodity traders and consumer goods manufacturers.
Industry players were
initially sceptical of
the moves arguing they could lead to the search for alternative sources of
cocoa, before expressing their support.
These developments come on the
heels of a June exposé by
The Washington Post that revealed that cocoa production in Ivory Coast remains
rife with illegal child labour and trafficking despite years of pledges made by
the industry to clean up its act. The authors concluded that “the odds are
substantial that a chocolate bar bought in the United States is the product of
child labor.” A similar situation is likely in Europe, since global commodity
markets are served by the same giant traders.
It is estimated that
up to 2.1 million children work in exploitative and hazardous conditions in
cocoa fields in Ivory Coast and Ghana. A 2018
study concluded that this situation is largely driven by the high
poverty levels among cocoa farmers that the new pricing policies in Ghana and
Ivory Coast are designed to reduce. The Post’s investigation provides a vivid
account of children as young as 10 being regularly bused from Burkina Faso to
cocoa farms in Ivory Coast by “bosses” who take a cut on the children’s labour.
In 2001 some of the largest
chocolate companies – including Nestlé USA, Mars and Hershey – pledged to
eradicate child labour from their West African suppliers in a bid to avoid
binding regulatory action by the US congress. Since then, several deadlines to
achieve that goal have been missed.
The current – watered down – pledge is to reduce child labour by 70% by next
year. This too looks likely to fail according
to industry officials.
One of the reasons cited by The
Post for this failure is that firms – including Hershey, Mars and Nestlé –
still only trace a minority of their cocoa back to farms, making it impossible
to engage with non-compliant growers. A reported lack of will and the absence
of any consequences for the industry have precluded decisive action to
transform the supply chains of the largest cocoa traders and consumer goods
manufacturers.
In July, US senators Sherrod
Brown and Ron Wyden called on the US Customs and Border Protections (CBP) to
enforce the US Tariff Act and block
the import of cocoa made with forced labour.
The failures of the chocolate
industry are not limited to child labour. A report published
by Mighty Earth in December revealed that more than half of Ivorian protected
forest areas had showed an increased in their rates of deforestation since late
2017, when a commitment by the industry to end deforestation linked to the
production of cocoa was penned. In 2018, around 14,00 hectares of forests were
cleared in Ivory Coast’s southwest cocoa heartland.
Mighty Earth found that “farmers
who engaged in deforestation for cocoa were still able to openly sell their
cocoa without repercussions.” The conservation NGO identified several cases of
illegal deforestation by cocoa farmers within protected areas, including at the
Cavally Forest Reserve, Goin Debé classified forest and Mount Péko National
Park in Ivory Coast. Mighty Earth blamed a lack of supplier monitoring by the
largest buyers, such as Cargill.
Earlier this
year Earthsight research found that rising illegal deforestation for
cocoa in Nigeria was likely being driven by an increase in EU imports of the
commodity from the country.
Campaigners have often condemned voluntary
commitments and industry certification schemes as woefully insufficient to
protect forests, workers and communities. The evidence of persistent child
labour and illegal deforestation in cocoa supply chains – despite nearly 20
years of pledges made by the industry – provides support to such criticism.
As The Washington Post’s exposé
makes clear, industry bosses knew from
the start that their firms were never going to meet the goals set out in 2001.
They also reportedly engaged in cynical manipulation of the agreement’s targets
in desperate attempts to continue to avoid legislative action.
Even the industry-backed Tropical
Forest Alliance has called for government
action in consuming countries to regulate and ban imports of commodities linked
to human rights violations and deforestation.
A European Commission
Communication on “Stepping Up EU Action to Protect the World’s Forests,”
published in late July has been criticised for
downplaying these concerns. The plan mostly supports the continuity of
voluntary action by companies and merely pledges to assess options for much
needed legally-binding regulations campaigners say are required.
