Our chocolate could have caused more deforestation in West Africa than we think

Media release

Agriculture: Cocoa cultivation drives deforestation in two West African countries

High-resolution maps of cocoa cultivation in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana suggest the practice is considerably larger than official sources had reported to date and may be linked to deforestation in the region, according to a study published in Nature Food.

Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana are the largest producers of cocoa in the world, accounting for two-thirds of production. However, the extent and exact location of cocoa plantations in the two countries have been unknown despite their relevance economically, socially and environmentally. It has been estimated that Côte d’Ivoire has lost more than 90% of its forest cover since 1950 and Ghana may have lost over 65%. The lack of precise maps has hindered the accurate quantification of cocoa expansion in protected areas, and cocoa production and yields, limiting information that could improve sustainable land governance.

To explore the extent of cocoa plantations in the region, Nikolai Kalischek and colleagues trained a neural network on a dataset of more than 100,000 cocoa farms in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, combined with publicly available satellite imagery. The neural network was able to create high-resolution maps of cocoa plantations, which were then validated on the ground. Based on these maps, the authors suggest that cocoa cultivation may be linked to over 37% and 13% of forest loss in protected areas in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, respectively. They indicate that official data underestimate the total planted area of cultivation and suggest that in Ghana the overall area of cocoa cultivation was almost 40% larger than official figures indicate.

The authors suggest that their maps may aid wider understanding of cocoa cultivation in the region, which has implications for conservation and economic development.