"New Report: One Year In, Chocolate Industry Commitments Fail to Stop Deforestation", 7 December 2018

Despite the chocolate industry’s pledge to cease sourcing cocoa linked to deforestation one year ago, a new Mighty Earth report finds that deforestation in West Africa for cocoa has continued, and in some cases has increased. The report, Behind the Wrapper: Greenwashing in the Chocolate Industry, identifies deforestation hotspots, including in protected areas and national parks, putting some of the last refuges for forest elephants and chimpanzees at risk and threatening the stability of the regional climate...

Last year, the world’s largest chocolate and cocoa companies... stood beside representatives of... Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, and committed to transform their industry, creating the Cocoa and Forests Initiative (CFI)... Approaching the one-year anniversary of these commitments, Mighty Earth used a combination of satellites, drones, and on-the-ground field teams to identify how – and if – these commitments are being implemented in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana.

The report found that over half of the Ivorian forest areas reviewed showed an increase in their rates of deforestation since the announcement of the CFI one year ago. This deforestation violates the most fundamental tenet of the chocolate industry’s and governments’ commitment: to end new cultivation of cocoa in national parks and protected areas...

Mighty Earth’s field team documented... children laboring in cocoa fields as well...