ECONOMIC AND FINANCIAL CHALLENGES TO SCALING UP SUSTAINABLE COCOA PRODUCTION IN CÔTE D’IVOIRE - executive summary

Côte d’Ivoire has one of the fastest rates of deforestation in the world and the fastest in Africa. The most promising solutions to decouple agriculture from deforestation would be to increase agricultural productivity with improved plant material while making use of good practices (intensification) and to plant associated trees in cocoa plantations (agroforestry). 

In 2016, the Permanent REDD+ Executive Secretariat at the Ministry of Environment mandated a framing study on the private investment opportunities in Côte d’Ivoire. The main goal of this study on economic and financing models is to provide the government with useful information to assist ongoing private sector commitments, and to bring strategic data to other related initiatives (including the Cocoa and Forests initiative, the working group Environment and Climate Change from the cocoa sector Private-Public Partnership Platform or the Green Climate Fund). UN Environment is partnering with the European Forest Institute to design tangible financing models for deforestation-free cocoa agriculture by the private sector, in cooperation with the Ivorian state and its partners. The successful uptake of agroforestry in the cocoa production chain is a major component of the analysis.