Towards zero deforestation cocoa?

Deforestation is one of the major causes of accelerated global warming, but also of the collapse of biodiversity. Certain agricultural commodities such as cocoa have contributed significantly to deforestation in recent decades, and global efforts to halt this degradation are still inadequate. To stem the tide, the European Union, the main consumer market for these products, adopted a regulation in 2023 aimed at making it illegal to place products that have contributed to deforestation on the European market from 2025.

Cocoa is one of the 7 products affected by this new regulation (RDUE) and will therefore soon have to be fully traceable from the production plot to the consumer. For their part, Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana, which account for 60% of the world's cocoa production, have produced the West African standard ARS-1000, which sets out the requirements for "good practice" in cocoa production, with the aim of guaranteeing the traceability and environmental sustainability of the sector.

Achieving this level of transparency in the cocoa sector will require far-reaching changes to the organisation of a sector that has for so long been characterised by the opacity of the raw material's origins. After decades of largely unfulfilled promises to eradicate deforestation, eliminate child labour and promote "good agricultural practices", companies in the cocoa sector are now faced with legal obligations that apply to everyone. However, the various links in the cocoa-chocolate chain have neither the same assets nor the same constraints when it comes to making the changes needed to meet the sector's socio-economic and environmental challenges.

In this context, are the common rules of the game ("level playing field") sufficient to guarantee the sector's ecological transition? How will and can players comply with the requirements of the EUDR and the ARS-1000 standard? In particular, what are the direct impacts on the actors furthest upstream in the sector: producers and cooperatives? With a view to supporting these changes, Commerce Équitable France, the Réseau Ivoirien du Commerce Équitable (RICE), the Fair Trade Advocacy Office (FTAO) and Agronomes et Vétérinaires Sans Frontières (AVSF) commissioned IDEF and BF Consult to carry out a study on the costs of compliance with ARS-1000 and RDUE standards for Ivorian cocoa cooperatives.