Stakeholder perspectives on cocoa’s living income differential and sustainability trade-offs in Ghana

Adams, Marshall Alhassan; Carodenuto, Sophia

doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2023.106201

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…The perceived inadequacy of current measures, alongside low yields and pricing mechanisms, threaten farmer commitment to forest conservation efforts under the Ghana Cocoa REDD+ program. The Living Income Differential (LID), implemented by the government of Ghana in 2019, adding 400 USD per ton to all cocoa sales to raise cocoa farmers’ income (Adams and Carodenuto 2023 ), the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (European Union 2022 ), and the UK Environment Act (Parliament of the UK 2021 ) are positive steps toward improving farmers’ livelihoods and social and environmental conditions and support the intention of Ghana Cocoa REDD+ to generate economic and social NCBs. However, there is a need for transparency and accountability to ensure that a significant amount of the LID is passed on to farmers and cocoa farming communities (Fountain 2022 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Ghana is a leading producer of cocoa, with the commodity representing the backbone of the country’s economy due to the contribution it makes to employment and foreign exchange generation (Adams and Carodenuto 2023 ; Gneiting and Arhin 2023 ). An estimated 800,000 smallholder farmers derive their livelihood from cocoa farming (Nasser et al 2020 ).…”

Section: Conceptual and Contextual Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Actor Perceptions of the Governance Framework and Non-Carbon Benefits from the Ghana Cocoa Forest REDD+ Program: An Extended Q-Study of the Juabuso-Bia Hotspot Intervention Area

Dugasseh,

Adams,

Zandersen

2024

Environmental Management

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The expansion of cocoa farms is a major driver of deforestation and emissions in Ghana’s high forest zone. The Ghana Cocoa Forest Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation Program (REDD+) was launched as the world’s first commodity-based initiative to address emissions from deforestation caused by cocoa production and generate non-carbon benefits. Hotspot Intervention Areas were established to implement the Ghana Cocoa REDD+ program. This study combines Q-methodology with focus group discussions and interviews to assess stakeholder perceptions in the Juabuso-Bia cocoa landscape regarding the capacity of the Hotspot Intervention Area to facilitate the generation of governance and economic non-carbon benefits to sustain emission reductions. We found that introducing the Hotspot Intervention Area has re-centralized landscape governance, which, coupled with weak collaboration among stakeholders, has led to poor generation of non-carbon benefits. Furthermore, efforts to include women in the leadership structure of the Hotspot Intervention Area can be described as tokenism, and little has been done to improve land and tree tenure for vulnerable groups. This, combined with the low adoption of climate-smart cocoa practices, is likely to negatively affect the generation of economic non-carbon benefits. To overcome these challenges, we recommend reforming the Hotspot Intervention Area, bolstering community-level sensitization, improving access to decision-making spaces that will enhance the participation of women and minority groups in landscape governance, and improving farmers’ tenure security through a registration scheme for land and trees. These recommendations can ensure the efficient generation of non-carbon benefits, which are key to the success of REDD+.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Conceptual and Contextual Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Actor Perceptions of the Governance Framework and Non-Carbon Benefits from the Ghana Cocoa Forest REDD+ Program: An Extended Q-Study of the Juabuso-Bia Hotspot Intervention Area

Dugasseh,

Adams,

Zandersen

2024

Environmental Management

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“…The international cocoa market has been defined as a sector with high differences in income among the actors participating in cocoa production and supply chains, with farmers being especially affected [5]. Furthermore, there is a clear lack of responsibility regarding the reduction in the environmental impacts of the cocoa production systems of upstream-phase cocoa producers [6].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Derived Environmental Impacts of Organic Fairtrade Cocoa (Peru) Compared to Its Conventional Equivalent (Ivory Coast) through Life-Cycle Assessment in the Basque Country

López del Amo,

Akizu-Gardoki

2024

Sustainability

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There is a global need to create an environmentally low-impact and socially fair international food and agriculture system. Specifically, in the case of chocolate, since it is difficult to produce locally in consumer countries, the socio-economic impact and benefits of its production have long been unfairly distributed. This research analyses the differences between the global environmental impacts of Fairtrade-certified and organically produced cocoa (from Peru), sold in the form of a chocolate bar purchased in the Basque Country (Europe), and the respective average conventional product made with non-organic cocoa beans (from Ivory Coast). Life-cycle assessment (LCA) methodology was used to calculate five impact categories, while ReCiPe 2016 Midpoint Hierarchist was used to analyse the global warming potential (GWP), terrestrial ecotoxicity (TE), and environmental footprint (ENVF, for land use); AWARE was used to measure the water footprint (WF); and cumulative energy demand (CED) assessed energy footprint (EF). The selected functional unit (FU) is 1 kg of final chocolate bar (72% cocoa), extrapolating the characteristics of a 150 g bar. The system boundaries take into account a cradle-to-gate LCA covering the following phases: the production of ingredients, the processing of cocoa paste, transportation and packaging, the manufacture of the chocolate, and its final retail distribution. The results show that certified Organic Agriculture and Fairtrade (OA&FT) chocolate had an average global warming potential (GWP) of 3.37 kg CO2-eq per kilogram, 57.3% lower than Conventional Agriculture (CA)-based chocolate, with the greatest reduction associated with the production of ingredients, at −71.8%. The OA&FT chocolate studied had an 87.4% lower impact in the category of terrestrial ecotoxicity (TE) than that of the CA-based chocolate, yielding 13.7 and 108.6 kg 1,4-DCB per kilogram, respectively. The greatest reduction in the TE impact category also occurred for the OA&FT chocolate in the ingredient production phase, at 93%. Reductions in energy footprint (EF) and water footprint (WF) were also observed in the OA&FT product (21% and 5%). In contrast, although OA&FT processing drastically reduced the associated environmental loads, an increase in packaging and transport phase impacts was observed in the GWP and TE categories (95% and 107%, respectively). Similarly, an increase of 18.7% was observed in the land use footprint for the OA&FT chocolate. The greater need for cropland is compensated by the reduction of 449.02 kg 1,4-DCB·person−1 year−1 in the TE category. This research shows that replacing the current consumption of CA cocoa with OA&FT cocoa has the potential to reduce the GWP by 21.95 kg CO2-eq·person−1·year−1, reducing the current Basque average emission range of 8.4 tCO2-eq·yr−1 by 0.26%. As a future subject to study, it was also found that the impact of long-distance maritime transportation and packaging could still have the potential to be reduced, it currently being the cause of up to 11% of the GWP from OA&FT cocoa.

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Can Agroforestry Provide a Future for Cocoa? Implications for Policy and Practice

Olwig,

Asare,

Vaast

et al. 2023

Agroforestry as Climate Change Adaptation

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Climate change is threatening cocoa production in Ghana, the world’s second largest cocoa exporter. Yet, as we have shown in this book, the impacts of climate change must be understood in the context of the multiple socioeconomic and biophysical pressures facing cocoa farmers, including the conversion of farms for other land uses, increasing hired labor costs as well as pests and diseases. This final chapter summarizes the book’s overall findings on cocoa agroforestry as climate change adaption and points to ways forward in terms of policy, practice and research. Our findings suggest that a nuanced view of farmers, agroecosystems and sites is necessary and emphasize the need to study shade tree species and species diversity, in addition to shade levels, to optimize the sustainability of cocoa farming. We further suggest that it may not be possible to sustainably grow cocoa in marginal regions of the cocoa belt, where yields are lower and where agroforestry may be unable to mitigate the negative impacts of the adverse climate. Finally, we point to the importance of considering rights and access to trees, land, extension services and resources, and call for more multidisciplinary research on differently situated farmers’ opportunities and needs.

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Stakeholder perspectives on cocoa’s living income differential and sustainability trade-offs in Ghana

Cited by 6 publications

References 46 publications

Actor Perceptions of the Governance Framework and Non-Carbon Benefits from the Ghana Cocoa Forest REDD+ Program: An Extended Q-Study of the Juabuso-Bia Hotspot Intervention Area

Actor Perceptions of the Governance Framework and Non-Carbon Benefits from the Ghana Cocoa Forest REDD+ Program: An Extended Q-Study of the Juabuso-Bia Hotspot Intervention Area

Derived Environmental Impacts of Organic Fairtrade Cocoa (Peru) Compared to Its Conventional Equivalent (Ivory Coast) through Life-Cycle Assessment in the Basque Country

Can Agroforestry Provide a Future for Cocoa? Implications for Policy and Practice

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