Initiated by the World Cocoa Foundation (WCF), the Dutch Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH) and the Prince of Wales’ International Sustainability Unit (ISU), 12 of the world's leading chocolate and cocoa companies - including Barry Callebaut - published yesterday their commitment to end deforestation and forest degradation in key cocoa growing countries. As both countries make for nearly 60% of the world's cocoa crop, the initiative will specifically focus on Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana.

In the coming months the pledging parties will work out a monitoring and reporting framework tracking every company's deforestation commitments and investments. This will be presented end this year at the COP 23 United Nations climate discussions in Bonn (Germany).  

COP 23 is an important meeting which will focus on putting the words of the Paris Climate Agreement, concluded December 2015, into concrete, measurable actions. This applies as much to industry, as it does to the over 160 countries that have submitted their plans on how they intend to reduce CO2 emissions in the coming years. The successful implementation of these country plans is pivotal in creating an enabling environment to scale up the impact of industry’s efforts to fight deforestation and climate change, i.e. by incentivizing climate smart agriculture, effective enforcement of deforestation legislation and supporting sustainably sourced raw materials.