- Wildlife in the heart of the Congo Basin, an area that stretches from western and southern Cameroon to northeastern and eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, are most at risk from the expansion of cacao cultivation, a recent study found.
- Cameroon, the world’s fourth-largest cacao producer, wants to double its output by 2030 — an ambition at odds with the country’s stubbornly low yields, changing climatic conditions, and the demand for “deforestation-free” cocoa from consumer nations.
- “Cameroon has little area available for agricultural expansion outside forests,” Marieke Sassen, a co-author of the new study, told Mongabay.
- Three-quarters of Cameroon’s cocoa is destined for the European Union, which passed a regulation in 2023 to ban imports of cocoa produced on recently deforested or degraded forestland.
Cacao cultivation is a major threat to the Congo Basin rainforest, with new research showing just where expanding cultivation could imperil the region’s rich wildlife.
“We found areas within the central parts of the Congo Basin to be at high risk of biodiversity loss due to cocoa expansion,” said study lead author Vignesh Kamath, from the United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC).
Kamath and his colleagues mapped areas most likely to see new planting of cacao — identifying areas with similar agricultural conditions to where cacao is already being grown as well as transport links to major cities — and overlaid this with areas of high biodiversity. Their maps show southern Cameroon, nearly all of Equatorial Guinea, northern Gabon, and the northeastern and eastern parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo have the most favorable conditions for adoption of this cash crop.
This green belt across Central Africa includes some of the planet’s most precious wildlife havens. Expanding cacao cultivation could put pressure on protected areas like Cameroon’s Nki National Park and the DRC’s Okapi Wildlife Reserve, Maiko National Park and Virunga National Park, the team found. Together these areas host some of the last remaining habitats for great apes, forest elephants and woodland-dwelling ungulates.
Governments in the region are well aware of the potential for cacao production. Cameroon is already the fourth-largest producer in the world and the third-largest in Africa (after Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana). Its annual production increased steadily from 122,600 metric tons in 2000 to nearly 300,000 metric tons today.
The country wants to double its output by 2030, but this ambition could falter in the face of stubbornly low yields, changing climatic conditions, and evolving demands from consumer nations.
To this point, growing exports of cocoa, the processed form of cacao, have largely been achieved by expanding the acreage under cultivation. “The estimated harvested area for cocoa has increased 50% in the past 10 years, [while] yields [per hectare] stayed the same,” study co-author Marieke Sassen, a senior researcher at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, said in an emailed response to Mongabay.
Currently, three-quarters of Cameroon’s cocoa is destined for Europe, with the Netherlands the main buyer. The European Union passed a regulation in 2023 to ban imports of cocoa and other commodities produced on recently deforested or degraded forest.
Cameroon lost around 5% of its forest cover between 2000 and 2020. While forest loss has accelerated in recent years, about 40% of the country is still forested.
“Cameroon has little area available for agricultural expansion outside forests,” Sassen said.
Despite this, Cameroon’s government is betting, at least publicly, on rising yields to boost overall production without further damaging its forests.
“Officially, we don’t have ambitions to extend into new areas,” said Michael Ndoping, who heads Cameroon’s National Cocoa and Coffee Board (NCCB), a government agency responsible for marketing Cameroon’s cocoa. “But you can’t stop farmers from doing what they want on their land.”
Most of the cacao in West Africa, including Cameroon, is grown on family-managed plots. Researchers say lack of tenure security, poor access to fertilizer and pesticide, and, increasingly, climate change is stifling productivity. Poor yields push farmers to expand into new areas.
There are around 600,000 farmers growing cacao in Cameroon, mostly on small plantations under the shade of taller trees of other species. Cacao is an understory species native to South America¬ that doesn’t do well under direct sunlight, especially when young.
Forested areas often prove to be a natural fit for shaded cacao cultivation. The crop thrives in the hot humid tropics with evenly distributed rainfall during the rainy season.
Erratic rainfall patterns aren’t improving the outlook, according to Joël Martin Atangana Owona, a program manager at IDH, a Netherlands-based foundation working on sustainable cocoa supply chains. “The rain which used to come at a certain period is no longer coming. Farmers are not really equipped to tackle this shortfall,” he said. The Dutch and Swiss governments are IDH’s biggest funders.
Kamath noted that similar changes to rainfall in West Africa could accelerate incursions into the heart of the Congo Basin. “Climate change is expected to reduce the suitability of land for cocoa in parts of West Africa, including in areas in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire,” he said. “The declining yields in West Africa could lead to a shift in production area into the forests of Cameroon an¬d other Congo Basin countries.”
Ndoping at the NCCB suggested the answer to poor yields in Cameroon can be found in better farm management, controlling diseases, and applying chemicals. “We have programs to subsidize inputs for farmers like mechanical inputs, fertilizers and pesticides,” he said. “We will pursue all that.”
Like Ndoping, Sassen said Cameroon and other Congo Basin countries will need to make significant investments to increase productivity. But, she added, “so far, these investments and efforts lag behind.”
The Cameroonian government is aware its cocoa ambitions may endanger its forests. In 2021, it launched the “Roadmap to Deforestation-free Cocoa,” gathering private companies and civil society organizations in a coalition to prevent cocoa-linked deforestation and degradation. Under the roadmap that IDH is facilitating, the government is developing a national traceability system for cocoa and a satellite-based system to track deforestation linked to cocoa.
The success of these measures could well determine if Cameroon will be able to continue selling its cocoa to its biggest market, the EU. With the passage of the EU’s antideforestation regulation, or EUDR, Cameroon will not be able to sell cocoa produced on forestland degraded or cleared after Dec 31, 2020. The new regulation comes into force by the end of 2025.
“We think that we will be able to sell to Europe. For the little [cocoa] that is not compliant, we can try to find new buyers, but that’s not our ambition,” Ndoping said. “We want to sell to Europe.”
Read more:
Cameroon aims to double cacao, coffee production, yet also save forests
[Correction: The article has been updated to correct the affiliation of Vignesh Kamath. He is affiliated to the United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre not to the United Nations Environment Programme.]
Citation:
Kamath, V., Sassen, M., Arnell, A., Van Soesbergen, A., & Bunn, C. (2024). Identifying areas where biodiversity is at risk from potential cocoa expansion in the Congo Basin. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, 376, 109216. doi:10.1016/j.agee.2024.109216
Ndo, E., Akoutou Mvondo, E., Kaldjob, C., Mfoumou Eyi, C., Sonfo, A., Dongmo, M., … Toda, M. (2024). Socioeconomic factors influencing the gathering of major non-timber forest products around Nki and Boumba-Bek national parks, southeastern Cameroon. Forest Policy and Economics, 168, 103293. doi:10.1016/j.forpol.2024.103293
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