Forests help stabilize the climate: they regulate ecosystems, protect biodiversity, drive more sustainable growth — and play an integral part in the carbon cycle. Climate change remains one of the biggest challenges facing our planet, its people – and businesses – and the cocoa sector has an important role in helping to tackle this issue. Developing a more sustainable, scaled and thriving cocoa supply chain will help us to reduce our total GHG footprint and in turn, achieve Mondelēz International’s long-term goal to realize net zero CO₂e emissions by 2050.
Cocoa Life’s ambition is to seek no deforestation on Cocoa Life farms by helping to protect and restore the forests where cocoa grows.
Cocoa farmers are already seeing the impacts of climate change and if the cocoa sector doesn’t take action, current cocoa-producing regions may no longer be viable in the future.
Through Cocoa Life, we’re helping to protect and restore forests by supporting farming communities with on and off-farm tree planting activities, agroforestry techniques and farm mapping technologies. We’re also implementing landscape-wide initiatives to support forest conservation and restoration, and ecosystem interventions, to with the aim of helping to reduce carbon emissions. A landscape approach aims to go beyond the farm gate to a wider geographic area of land and forests reaching more communities.
DEFORESTATION
Deforestation disrupts local weather patterns and causes carbon emissions, contributing to global climate change. As weather patterns evolve, like high temperatures and droughts, farmers aren’t able to grow as much cocoa. They’re forced to expand into new areas, triggering this vicious cycle all over again.
Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana, for instance, supply about 60% of the world’s cocoa, but lost 25% and 8% respectively of their humid primary forest between 2002 and 2019.
Cocoa Life’s work to protect and restore forests in cocoa regions is critical to help reduce our overall carbon footprint. Mondelēz International’s goal is to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions across Scopes 1, 2 and 3 by 2050.
We focus on protecting and restoring forests by helping farmers to grow more cocoa on less land and apply farming practices which help reduce pressure on cocoa landscapes. This includes investment in training farmers, encouraging the adoption of good agricultural and environmental practices — including agroforestry — and incentivizing communities to plant trees. This is especially important for improving yields, diversifying incomes, and helping to ensure farms are not encroaching on forested land.
Our strategy is focused on three areas:
Protect:
Helping to protect forests by scaling farm mapping and distributing trees for on- & off-farm planting.
Produce:
Helping to grow more profitable cocoa businesses for farming communities while restoring forests.
- Distributing cocoa seedlings.
- Targeting agricultural practices.
- Expanding the ‘Payment for Ecosystem Services’ (PES) program and the Modified Taungya System (MTS). They are ready to be enhanced, scaled up, and rolled out to more cocoa communities.
People:
Helping to lift cocoa communities continues to remain at the core of what we do. We facilitate investments to build capacity in communities so they can shape their own future and make community decisions reflect their diverse needs. This includes Community Action Plans & Community Development Committees who assess needs and priorities for the communities and forests.
"Illegal deforestation in our cocoa supply chain is unacceptable. We work with our program and government partners to tackle such cases: we identify at-risk areas by mapping all the farms registered in our Cocoa Life program, and we incentivize agroforestry, reforestation and forests conservation by piloting payments for environmental systems. Tackling deforestation is challenging yet necessary, and we want to lead by implementing and sharing lessons learned. Our ambition is to work on the ground, tackle root causes, and partner with governments and others. The time to act together is now, and fast!"
Cedric van Cutsem, Senior Director Cocoa Life, Mondelēz International
We have been taking a lead role in driving sector-wide change and have achieved major milestones over the years:
- 2014: Endorsed the New York Declaration on Forests, seeking to end deforestation.
- 2015: Shared ambition to lead private sector action at the COP21 climate talks in Paris, as part of Côte d’Ivoire’s national program to combat deforestation.
- 2017:
- Joined the Cocoa & Forests Initiative with the World Cocoa Foundation, The Prince of Wales’ International Sustainability Unit and 11 other cocoa and chocolate companies to address deforestation and forest degradation.
- Announced the Cocoa & Forests Initiative’s Frameworks for Action at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP23) with governments in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana.
- Signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of Environment in Côte d’Ivoire to support the country’s bold ambition to reach zero deforestation in cocoa.
- Started the first REDD+ project in the Nawa region of Côte d’Ivoire, mapping cocoa farms in 85% of the area to identify and monitor areas at risk for deforestation, and to create land-use plans.
- Shared a joint discussion paper with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), exploring how public and private sectors can work together to reduce deforestation in Côte d’Ivoire.
- 2018:
- Signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the UNDP, Forestry Commission of Ghana and Ghana Cocoa Board to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in the cocoa supply chain across Ghana.
- Committed to publish an action plan through the Cocoa & Forests Initiative with industry and government partners in Ghana.
- Published a climate change impact study on cocoa in Indonesia together with the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT).
- Launched expansion of Cocoa Life in Brazil which includes establishing effective agroforestry models to help farmers plant cocoa trees as a part of comprehensive farming plans to restore degraded land in the Amazon rainforest.
- 2019: Published ambitious action plans to protect and restore forests in cocoa-growing areas across Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Indonesia, as part of the Cocoa and Forests Initiative.
- 2020:
- Published the first Cocoa Life CFI progress report on the roll-out of our CFI action plans to protect and restore forests.
- Partnered with South Pole to develop a tool to estimate the possible carbon impact of Cocoa Life’s initiatives on farm and forests.
- 2021/2022: Continued partnership with the Ghana Cocoa Board and UNDP to distribute shade trees and provide natural resource management and planning tools for cocoa farmers and their communities.
- 2022/2023: Renewed support to the Cocoa & Forests Initiative with the publication of phase two action plans in Côte D’Ivoire and Ghana in latest progress report.
After raising the issue of cocoa-based deforestation at COP21 in Paris, in 2017 Mondelēz International became a founding member of the Cocoa & Forests Initiative (CFI), alongside the governments of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, and other world-leading chocolate and cocoa companies.
While protecting and restoring forests has been core to Cocoa Life since its inception, joining CFI was crucial to accelerate progress in collaboration with others: this partnership brought key stakeholders to the table and created a framework for collective action.
Furthermore, developing a more sustainable, scaled, and thriving cocoa supply chain will help us to reduce our total greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint and in turn, achieve our long-term Mondelēz International goal to realize net zero CO2 emissions.
Cocoa Life’s action plans have a three-pillar approach to forest protection and reforestation, which are closely aligned with the CFI frameworks – Protect, Produce, People.
"As a founding company of the Cocoa & Forests Initiative (CFI), we are pleased that it brought key sector stakeholders together to create new collaborations, such as the Asunafo-Asutifi landscape initiative in Ghana, that aim to help build more resilient landscapes in cocoa producing countries. Together with our partners, we look forward to driving forest-positive initiatives that can help create dynamic change in the landscapes where cocoa grows."
Christine Montenegro McGrath, SVP, Chief Impact & Sustainability Officer, Mondelēz International
FURTHER READING
This page was updated in June 2025.