Get cocoa plantations out of Côte d’Ivoire’s national parks!

Côte d’Ivoire was once a tropical paradise, but now its last remaining patches of rainforest are being destroyed for cocoa plantations – not even national parks are safe. The major chocolate producers have turned a blind eye to the ruthless exploitation. Tell Mars and other manufacturers to get the rainforest out of our chocolate!

Call to action

“The ancient forests of our nation, once a paradise for wildlife like chimpanzees, leopards, hippopotamus, and elephants, have been degraded and deforested to the point that they’re almost entirely gone. This deforestation is due principally to the cultivation of cocoa,” said Signo Kouamé Soulago Fernand, General Secretary ROSCIDET, a network of Ivorian NGOs specializing in environmental protection and sustainable development.

As the world’s largest producer, Côte d' Ivoire’s economy is completely dependent on cocoa exports. The industry takes a heavy environmental toll: cocoa is even grown in national parks – 40 percent of the harvest comes from illegal sources. Numerous protected areas have been all but cleared for plantations.

Small farmers often have no alternative but to plant cocoa bushes in the protected forests. In some cases, settlements with tens of thousands of inhabitants, churches, mosques, public schools and official health centers have sprung up around the illegal trade. Ivorian officials either turn a blind eye to the destruction or brutally evict farmers in arbitrary raids, in some cases torching whole villages without warning.

The cocoa passes through several levels of middlemen on its way to companies such as Cargill, Olam and Barry Callebaut – three corporations that account for half the world market in cocoa. “[The middlemen] openly admitted to us that they bought cocoa from inside national parks and protected forests,” writes NGO Mighty Earth in its report, “Chocolate’s Dark Secret”.

Mars, Mondelez, Nestlé, Hershey – all of the major manufacturers of chocolate products use cheap cocoa beans from Côte d’Ivoire, putting rainforest destruction in every bite. 

Please sign our petition and tell Big Chocolate to stop using cocoa grown in protected forests.

Back­ground Letter