The Ivory Coast’s dwindling rainforests could be “wiped out” under a new law that will see legal protections removed from thousands of square miles of classified forest and unprecedented power handed to industrial chocolate manufacturers.
Civil society groups, environmental campaigners and workers’ cooperatives have warned that the new forestry code, ratified by the National Assembly and currently being implemented, will encourage unsustainable cocoa production and legalise large-scale deforestation in already ravaged areas.
The majority of the Ivory Coast’s 7,700 square miles of protected forests are considered heavily degraded, with levels of deforestation at 75% or more. These will be turned into “agro-forests” under the control of international companies including Olam Cocoa and Siat. National parks and forests that are considered relatively intact will remain protected, according to the law, while a middle category will be gradually restored.