Only a quarter of the world's cocoa production is traded under a sustainability commitment, a study conducted by UCLouvain and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam revealed on Tuesday.
Researchers from the two institutions analysed cocoa bean exports in eight countries, representing 80% of shipments worldwide. The sustainability commitments studied included transparency, traceability, deforestation, child labour and agroforestry.
One of the main problems remains that "most commitments do not cover indirect sourcing by local intermediaries", but also that the commitments are mainly made by multinationals and not national traders. As a result, only 22% of the latter say they are able to trace even part of their cocoa back to cooperatives, and only 8% openly disclose the identity of their suppliers.
"Coordinated efforts by companies and governments to ensure that sustainable supply chain initiatives are transparent, monitored and enforced are needed if the cocoa sector is to succeed in bridging the gap between sustainability rhetoric and reality," the researchers conclude.
They stress the urgent need to implement change, as the lack of traceability in the supply chain is an aggravating factor in deforestation in West Africa: "Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana, the world's two largest producers, have respectively lost more than 90% and 65% of their forest area since 1950."
