In a recent paper published in Nature Food, co-authored by Dr Will Thompson from NbSI, the impact of cocoa cultivation on deforestation in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana is examined. By combining cocoa plantation data with publicly available satellite imagery in a deep learning framework, the study reveals that cocoa cultivation contributes to more than 37% of forest loss in protected areas in Côte d’Ivoire and over 13% in Ghana. This highlights that official reports underestimate the planted area by up to 40%.
Cocoa production in West Africa involves millions of farmers and a network of middlemen, both in private and public sectors, making sustainability efforts crucial in mitigating deforestation. Since 1950, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana have experienced significant forest loss, with the highest annual deforestation rates globally recorded in 2018. The paper focuses on the encroachment of cocoa production on native forests in these regions, particularly in protected areas such as Niegre, Scio, and Mt Sassandra in Côte d’Ivoire, as well as Tano Ehuro, Manzan, and Upper Wassaw in Ghana.
The consequences of deforestation driven by cocoa cultivation include biodiversity loss, climate impacts, and threats to food security and livelihoods. Existing map products either lack precision due to small reference datasets or are expensive to update due to manual georeferencing. To address this, the authors propose the creation of accurate, high-resolution maps of cocoa-growing areas. They developed a comprehensive framework deploying publicly available optical satellite imagery to generate a highly accurate map of cocoa production areas.
While the framework offers high accuracy and flexibility in tracking the expansion of cocoa plantations, it currently relies on multiple satellite image acquisitions for each location to compensate for atmospheric disturbances. Weekly monitoring of new cocoa plantations is not yet feasible. Nonetheless, the research emphasizes the potential of satellite imagery and mapping initiatives in informing sustainability efforts undertaken by both public and private entities.
Read the paper here: Cocoa plantations are associated with deforestation in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana | Nature Food
This case study highlights the work of Instituto Raoni, which protects and surveils over two million hectares of indigenous land, including the largest remaining contiguous segment of the Amazon rainforest.
Instituto Raoni (Raoni Institute) is the organizational face of the Kayapó, a Brazilian indigenous group that is fighting deforestation of the Amazon. The Kayapó indigenous peoples’ land is located in the so-called “Deforestation Ring” of the Amazon where deforestation pressures are most severe. Their territory is also part of the South Amazon Ecotones Ecological Corridor which is remarkably rich in biodiversity. Instituto Raoni encourages young Kayapó community members to act as “video warriors” documenting illegal logging and other activities that risk the integrity of their land. It also works to enable and teach sustainable agriculture and agroforestry methods to support the conservation of their land. In particular, Kayapó women play a key role in their communities as the sole custodians of agriculture and work to recover degraded land and implement agroforestry principles.
One of the main interventions has been the reduction in the use of fire to prepare land for agriculture to both reduce the communities’ carbon emissions and the impact of forest fires. Partnerships with NGOs have allowed for the expansion of sustainable agricultural practices, community farms, and the conservation of traditional crop varieties to further bring community needs into harmony with the surrounding landscape and ecosystem. Efforts to strengthen sustainable production chains have allowed the selling of handicrafts and non-timber forest products.
The work has resulted in benefits for mitigating the communities’ climate change impacts via reduced reliance on fire in agricultural practices, which also limits the risk of fires spreading and further contributing to deforestation. Ecosystem Health benefits arose from from Kayapó women recovering 13 hectares of degraded land through the implementation of agroforestry systems with an emphasis on the planting of native fruit species. The strengthening of fair-trade production chains, including the production of non-timber forest products like honey, is also reported to have generated income between BRL $500.00 (US$134) and BRL $2,000.00 (US $36) for nearly 70 indigenous families.
Read more about Instituto Raoni in the full case study on our global online platform.
The Talensi District is located in the environmentally fragile dryland area of northern Ghana, where almost 80% of the population works in agriculture, fisheries and forestry. Climate change, land clearing and unsustainable agricultural practices are leading to declining agricultural productivity and vulnerability of already marginal rural populations in this region.
World Vision Ghana, together with World Vision Australia, implemented the 2nd phase of the Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) Project in the Talensi District between 2013 and 2017, involving 24 communities. FMNR is a low-cost, innovative technique to restore and regenerate trees from the stumps of previously cut-down (but still living) trees. The project goal was to restore hundreds of hectares of degraded land, countering the challenges of soil erosion and water retention.
In Talensi, farmers are trained to use FMNR to regenerate tress on farmers’ crop and pastoral fields; as well as in community managed FMNR forests, where tree densities were much higher than in crop fields. As farmers prune trees to stimulate natural regeneration, more leaves and branches from the pruning process are left on site, and they improve soil quality and reduce soil erosion. The project also trained farmers to adopt sustainable agriculture techniques such as bulk composting, field mulching and ox ploughing. It supported communities to adopt diversified income-generating activities including planting fruit trees, honey production and the establishment of community savings groups. The project facilitated the formation of community volunteer fire brigades to manage bushfires, reduce field burning and enhance natural regeneration. The project also facilitated community agreements and the establishment of community by-laws to limit tree cutting and reduce field burning.
An evaluation of FMNR was conducted in 2018, covering the implementation between 2009 and 2017, highlighting the strength of FMNR as an approach is that it links strongly with agriculture, food security and livelihoods:
- 96% of survey respondents reporting that they practised FMNR on their farms.
- 80% of farmers reporting an increase in the number of trees in the community.
- 94% of farmers managing the quality of their soil.
- 64% reporting an increase in soil fertility.
- communities had restored 718 hectares of degraded land.
- reporting of one or more hungry months per e year reduced from 87% at the project baseline to 63%.
- income source diversity increased from 56% at baseline to 95%.
- households belonging to a group increasing from 8% to 76% over the course of the project.
- households experiencing crop failure reduced from 49.8% to 38.4%
- households experiencing loss of main income reduced from 7.1% to 2.5%.
FMNR activities in Talensi combined short-term and long-term benefits, and were made accessible and easy to adopt by being very low cost and simple to apply, as well as being integrated with other
initiatives that helped to alleviate the poverty in the area. The FMNR approach has also strengthened community bonds and cohesion across the different groups and families participating in agricultural value chains. Such visible results mean that the environmental and economic benefits are expected to continue beyond the implementation window.
Learn more about the FMNR project in the full case study in our global online platform.
An integrated nature-based farming and forestry approach in Guatemala has increased the resilience of local people to change, as shown by their better ability to cope with the implications of COVID-19 than communities without such a system.
The approach is known as “Maize, Potato, Sheep and Forest” (MPOB). It involves intercropping of the primary crops, maize and potato, with a range of other crops like beans and vegetables. Farmers also share seed banks to increase the genetic variety of crops and hence their resilience to climate change; for example, the resilience of the maize crops to increased humidity has been boosted in this way. Sheep and poultry are also kept as a major source of protein. Food production is coordinated at the community level, and natural resources and agricultural inputs are shared. Some communities also partake in a national forest incentive programme, whereby community-led forestry generates additional income.
Such a system is thought to have increased these communities’ resilience in a number of ways. Firstly, having a diversity of food sources means that when one or more fails due to extreme weather, disease or pests, not all food sources are lost. Secondly, communities using the MPOB system accumulated savings from selling surplus produce and from forest conservation payments, so when transport restrictions due to COVID-19 prevented rural communities from accessing markets, the MPOB communities were affected by this less severely. The lower reliance of MPOB communities on purchasing seeds and other external inputs also reduced the effect of the travel restrictions. Furthermore, the MPOB system has increased social capital and made collaboration within communities the norm, hence during times of hardship, the most vulnerable community members are supported by others who have surplus time, food or money.
In this way, multi-layer integrated agriculture using the MPOB system is a nature-based solution strengthening socio- and ecological resilience in the long term.
Read the full article here.
Floating agriculture is a traditional practice in Bangladesh, which is now spreading between communities, allowing farmers to maintain or increase agricultural productivity in the face of increased monsoon season flooding. It involves weaving together aquatic plants, most commonly the invasive water hyacinth, to form floating beds that rise and fall with the water level. Crops planted in these beds avoid water logging, and benefit from the nutrient rich decomposing matter, reducing the need for chemical fertilizers. When the water level falls in winter, the beds are ploughed into the soil and used to grow winter crops. Watch how it’s done.
Sierra Leone’s tropical rainforest is under threat from intensive agriculture, mining, logging and slash and burn agriculture for cocoa plantations. One major effort to prevent this is the introduction of cocoa agroforestry so that cocoa can be produced sustainably on the same land for many years, diminishing the need for further deforestation. This project was initiated 30 years ago in a partnership between the Conservation Society of Sierra Leone, the national government, BirdLife International, the RSPB and 140,000 local people. Wildlife conservation was originally the main goal of the project, but it has since evolved into a nature-based solution to provide multiple societal benefits, and was the first project in West Africa to be partly funded by carbon finance.
In the agroforestry system, cocoa trees are grown among larger trees that provide shade, and pineapples, chillies and maize are grown as a source of additional food and income for the farmers. This landscape also provides a better home for wildlife than conventional plantations. Although the greater shade cover in agroforestry reduces the yield of cocoa per unit area, overall it is more profitable than conventional cocoa plantations because the cost per unit area is lower, shade trees provide extra income (e.g. from timber) and the cocoa can fetch a higher market price. This project therefore improves local livelihoods, and through avoided deforestation protects biodiversity and saves an estimated 500,000 tonnes of carbon a year.
Changes in the climate drive shifts in the distribution and numbers of insects, plants and pathogens that are pests for agriculture. The ‘push-pull’ system has been widely implemented in Kenya to reduce loss of maize to pests, leading to increase in yields and net income, and concurrent reduction in the incidence of poverty. Napier grass is planted around the border of the field and attracts the stem-borer moth pests away from the crop, acting as the ‘pull’. In tandem, Desmodium is planted within the maize crop and releases volatile chemicals that repel the pests, acting as the ‘push’. In addition to providing insect control, the push and pull plants can be fed to livestock. Moreover, Desmodium is a legume and so fixes nitrogen from the air, increasing the nitrate content of the soil; it also releases chemicals from its roots which prevent germination of a parasitic weed.
