CIAT News by Maria Eliza Villarino | May 6, 2019

Figure: Cacao growing on a farm in the Department of Guaviare, Colombia. Photo by: Neil Palmer / CIAT

Nearly a year ago, Colombia signed up for the Cocoa & Forests Initiative, making it the first Latin American country to do so. Its commitment: to end deforestation in the Colombian cacao supply chain by 2020.

To meet that goal, the first order of business is to determine the extent of deforestation caused by cacao production in Colombia.

There’s no doubt that in some parts of the globe, cacao farming has led to deforestation. That’s the case of several countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, as a World Bank report has noted.

But what about Colombia? Results from a recently conducted study by CIAT on the country’s cacao sector tells a different story.

Based on spatial analysis using available information, previous studies, and interviews with value chain actors, the baseline study confirms that cacao cultivation is not a major cause of deforestation in Colombia. Rather, it is a key component of strategies to reduce conflict and, more recently, to achieve forest conservation and land restoration.

“What we found is that cacao production is, in several cases, associated with areas affected by conflict and with areas with presence of illegal crops; these are also areas with high deforestation rates,” noted Dr. Augusto Castro-Nuñez, who led the team of researchers that performed the study. “It doesn’t mean that cacao is causing deforestation; the reason for the spatial overlap is that cacao is promoted as an alternative to coca.”

Research has shown that municipalities with large-scale cultivation of coca — an illicit crop — experienced more conflict and greater deforestation.

“Although cacao is not a main driver of deforestation in Colombia,” said Castro-Nuñez, “it doesn’t mean we don’t have to work in the cacao value chain in order to prevent it from causing deforestation in the future, as well as to maximize its potential to become a livelihood alternative to farmers inhabiting areas affected by deforestation and conflict.”

Cacao, some believe, has a potential to be a “forest-protecting” crop when it’s located at forest margins and at so-called buffer zones, i.e., areas of land devoted to environmental protection. There’s a need to establish evidence on this, though.

Thus, cacao “could also be a restoration crop,” according to Andres Charry Camacho, a CIAT value chain expert and member of the study team. The impact on restoration, though, he added, is not that considerable given that areas planted with cacao aren’t significant, especially when compared with current areas of degraded lands.

See https://blog.ciat.cgiar.org/new-study-in-colombia-cacao-isnt-causing-significant-deforestation-but-could-help-reduce-forest-loss-and-conflict/