Source: European Investment Bank
The European Union has taken steps to combat deforestation and child labour through the Sustainable Cocoa Initiative and the Alliance for Sustainable Cocoa. Those initiatives call on countries like the Ivory Coast and Ghana, which produce 60% of the world’s cocoa, to improve oversight of the sector, combat deforestation and child labour, and ensure decent incomes for farmers. Exporters will also have to comply with a new European regulation on deforestation, which is expected to go into force in 2026.
In parallel, the Ivorian government has embarked on an “ambitious initiative” to implement new African standards that trace crops across cocoa-producing regions and improve environmental protection, says Sylvain Caurla, an agroforestry engineer with the European Investment Bank who works on sustainable cocoa and reforestation projects in the Ivory Coast.
“Cocoa has been a major driver of deforestation in recent decades,” Caurla says. “But cocoa is also a major contributor to Ivorian GDP. There is a world strategy around protecting forests, but also producing cocoa in a different way, a sustainable way – a way that provides a decent livelihood for communities that depend on it.”
The EIB’s loan to BNI was approved in September 2024, just in time for the main cocoa harvest season, which lasts from October to March. In a few weeks, BNI was able to put together projects – loans for agricultural cooperatives and others – accounting for about 90% of the EIB funds, says Marc-Antoine Coursaget, the loan officer in EIB Global who is handling the investment.
Around 60% of the financed cooperatives are led by young entrepreneurs or employ a significant number of young people, while 40% are either led by women or have a large number of women in the workforce.
The EIB and Agence Française de Développement will also provide technical assistance to help BNI strengthen its environmental and social management system and enable cocoa producers meet EU requirements and the demands of international certifications. Those regulations and certifications are designed to curb cacao’s incursion into Ivory Coast’s rainforest, which has shrunk by more than 80% since 1960, with devastating consequences for biodiversity.
Ivory Coast has embarked on vast programmes of reforestation to counter the loss. The EIB is providing €150 million to support the country’s forest preservation, rehabilitation and expansion strategy.
“The European Union has two main priorities in Ivory Coast: one is the Sustainable Cocoa Initiative and the second is low-carbon transition,” Coursaget says. “And when you fight deforestation, you also help reduce carbon emissions.”