Enforcing deforestation-free cocoa: European Union educates stakeholders on new regulations.

The press conference was organised on the sidelines of the 2024 edition of the Cocoa and Coffee Festival held at the esplanade of the Yaounde City Council.

The EU-organised press conference was also attended by a representative of the Ministry of Trade, officials of the Cocoa and Coffee Interprofessional Council, CICC, and the National Cocoa and Coffee Board, NCCB.

Speaking at the event, the EU Team head in charge of Environment, Agriculture, Climate Change and Energy, Philippe Mayaux, said cocoa produced from deforested land after December 31, 2020, will not be able to enter the EU market by December 2024, when the European Union Deforestation Regulation, EUDR, comes into force. 

The EUDR also prohibits the entry to EU markets of coffee, cattle, rubber, soya, wood, palm oil and derived products. 

The EUDR, which supports Cameroon’s sustainable cocoa objectives, is expected to accelerate progress towards cocoa traceability and sustainability.

“This deforestation regulation is really essential for us to protect the forest which is the framework for the livelihood of the population,” Mayaux said, adding that: “At the level of the EU, we realised that we have a great responsibility because due to the consumption of some products, we are responsible of deforestation in other countries and we want to avoid that”. 

“It has an impact on some value chain cocoa, timber, coffee but now we are ready to accompany these impacts. It is important because we need to build traceability systems for cocoa value chain, timber, coffee, rubber, soya and other products coming into the EU,” Mayaux further explained. 

On her part, the third Secretary of the EU Delegation to Cameroon in charge of Cooperation, Environment and Agriculture, Claudia Antonelli, underlined that the responsibility proving that cocoa and other products imported into the EU market are deforestation-free rest on the shoulders of the importer or importing companies and not on the producers.   

To ensure the traceability and deforestation-free of cocoa on the EU market, she indicated that importing companies must collect information showing the cocoa's origin (GPS information on plot), suppliers and buyers, and that the cocoa does not come from land deforested after December, 31, 2020.

She explained that with the EUDR, a benchmarking system will categorise countries or regions according to deforestation risk with the frequency of EU member states' checks set vary from low, standard or high risks areas. 

EUDR aligns with Cameroon’s deforestation-free cocoa roadmap

According to the General Manager of National Cocoa and Coffee Board, Micheal Ndoping, prior to the adoption of the EUDR, Cameroon had taken steps towards ensuring deforestation-free cocoa for the past five years. 

“Even before the European Union regulation took off, we were already working on the road map for deforestation-free cocoa in Cameroon. So, the EU regulation only came to reinforce what we were already doing,” Ndoping said. 

He added that: “All the major cocoa buyers like TELCAR, SIC Cacaos, OLAM and AMS have internal sustainability programmes and in those programmes traceability is part and parcel. So, this regulation only came to make it mandatory for the European markets”. 

According to Ndoping, available data at the cocoa board shows that about 70% of Cameroon’s cocoa production already conform to this regulation while efforts are being put in place to ensure the remaining 30% conform to the regulations. 

It is worth noting that cocoa is one of the drivers of forest loss in Cameroon and the EU is a major consumer of cocoa. In 2020, 65% of the cocoa produced in Cameroon was exported to the EU.

Also, 90% of global deforestation is driven by the expansion of agricultural land, contributing to climate change, biodiversity loss, soil erosion and desertification, and hindering sustainable development. 

This story first published in The Guardian Post issue No3131 of Tuesday June 04, 2024