The cocoa sector faces a number of challenges related to climate change and sustainability. A changing climate means that given current trends, many cocoa-growing regions will be too hot for cocoa trees to survive by 2050. The cocoa sector is contributing to making this problem worse, through the ongoing challenges around deforestation in cocoa-growing areas.

Adapting to climate change, and shifting to low-carbon production, will require extra resourcing. Cocoa farmers in Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana are amongst the poorest in the world. Thus, we cannot expect farmers to pay for cost of adaptation and mitigation.

This session will focus on three things – the urgency of these challenges; the central importance of raising farmers’ incomes as part of the solution; and the actions that we all need to take to bring about a more sustainable cocoa sector.

Objectives of the session

• To share information on the urgent climate-related challenges that the cocoa sector is facing
• To propose solutions for a more sustainable cocoa sector, in which farmers and cocoa trees can productively co-exist