The Nature Conservation Research Center with support from the National Committee of the Netherlands (IUCN) under the Green Landscape Alliance, the World Cocoa Foundation and the USAID, has initiated a guidance document on cocoa landscape approaches in Ghana.

This basically seeks to provide sustainable means of making Ghana’s cocoa sector environmentally safe and compliant. 

Launching the Guidance Document and Toolbox, Deputy CEO of Operations for Ghana’s cocoa regulator, COCOBOD, Dr. Emmanuel Opoku stated that his outfit has invested heavily in climate compliance tools for cocoa farmers. 

“Ghana COCOBOD has intensely invested to ensure farmers are resilient to climate change. This we have done by increasing farmers’ income and modernized cocoa production in ways consistent with the protection of the environment. As a corporate body, there have been efforts to ensure smart cocoa farming including the forest development programme which protects forest from green house,” he stated.

Meanwhile, Director of Programs and Research for the NCRC, Dr. Rebecca Ashley Asare, outlined the various multi stakeholder agreements Ghana has reached in ensuring a safe climate in the cocoa sector.

“After the last 20 years of predominantly farm activity, we have not been able to address environmental issues sustainably. What has been recommended in Ghana are multi stakeholder landscape approaches that include governance, performing space targets and based on that, receiving results-based payments,” she stated.

Ghana and its cocoa sector are already global leaders in conceiving and testing landscape approaches, including landscape governance mechanisms, standards and monitoring systems.

This comes from over 20 years of experience in developing and implementing the Community Resource Management Area (CREMA) mechanism.