And, while agribusiness has been encouraged to tackle both poverty and land rehabilitation, cutting down trees for cocoa farming violates EU laws on environment and business. The group calls for the existing mechanisms to be replaced with robust and transparent national traceability system in place in Côte d'Ivoire. Read: Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana demand higher cocoa pricesThe EU Deforestation Regulation adopted in June 2023 seeks to discourage importation of products from deforested and degraded lands. High global demand for cocoa has seen large tracts of land put under cultivation, often at the detriment of the environment in developing countries. Due to lack of infrastructure in Liberia, the harvested cocoa beans are transported across the border to Côte d'Ivoire for processing, prior to importation.
