Corporate Accountability Lab (CAL), the University of Ghana School of Law and Civic Response (Ghana), submitted a grievance to the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD)’s grievance and redress mechanism, on behalf of 30 cocoa farmers. The grievance underscores the very environmental and social issues that COCOBOD is mandated to monitor and resolve, but has failed to do so. In what may be the first use since the mechanism’s inception in 2018, this grievance will test COCOBOD’s promise to give cocoa-growing communities a voice.
Ghana is the second largest producer of cocoa in the world, home to over 800,000 smallholder farmers who make up about 60 percent of Ghana’s agricultural workforce. Despite the massive profits that global chocolate companies earn, poverty is pervasive in Ghana’s cocoa-growing communities. According to the 2022 Cocoa Barometer, an overwhelming majority of farmers and their families live in poverty: the average cocoa farmer earns between $0.40 and $0.45 USD per day, whereas the living wage in Ghana is estimated as of 2022 to be $13.5 USD per day. Meanwhile, chocolate companies have been making record profits despite the pandemic and global inflation.
The Ghana Cocoa Board, or COCOBOD, is the government agency that controls the cocoa industry. As the sole seller and buyer of Ghanaian cocoa, COCOBOD has enormous power in Ghana. It is involved in everything from providing seedlings to farmers, to regulating who can purchase and export cocoa. In 2019, when Ghana received a $600 million USD syndicated loan from the African Development Bank and other private lenders to maximize cocoa production and improve farmers’ livelihoods, COCOBOD had to establish an Environmental and Social Management System (ESMS) with a grievance and redress mechanism.
Although the ESMS promised to “provide a structured framework for identifying and managing potential environmental, social, health and safety risks, impacts and opportunities of all operations in the cocoa sector,” it has yet to deliver. Since its adoption in 2018, most farmers still do not earn a living wage; deforestation has continued at an alarming rate; efforts to combat climate change have been hampered by the industry’s failure to embrace a transition to agroforestry; cocoa farmers have continued to use illegal pesticides and overuse legal pesticides; and hazardous child labour remains all too common in the sector.
COCOBOD’s dominant market position offers it the critical yet unrealized opportunity to alleviate the entrenched poverty, child labor, and environmental harms in the cocoa sector. CAL urges COCOBOD to seize this opportunity by implementing the following changes:
The Farmgate Price, Transparency, and Traceability: Increase the farmgate price for cocoa to ensure farmers earn a living income, and require full transparency and traceability of supply chains;
Deforestation and Climate Change: Ensure companies comply with their commitments to end deforestation in the sector, and assist cocoa farmers’ transition to agroforestry;
Pesticide Use: Better regulate the sale and use of pesticides in the cocoa sector, ensure that only legal chemicals are used in the correct quantities, and assist farmers in appropriately disposing of pesticides and pesticide containers;
Hazardous Child Labour: Require companies to implement legitimate Child Labour Monitoring and Remediation Systems (CLMRS) as part of their sourcing practices.
CAL, Civic Response and the University of Ghana School of Law look forward to engaging with COCOBOD and seeing greater improvements in the cocoa sector. We hope this grievance sets a precedent for constructive dialogue and meaningful reforms for the cocoa-growing communities in Ghana. To learn more about the grievance, read our press release. For more background about the COCOBOD grievance and redress mechanism, see COCOBOD’s Unrealised Potential: Promoting Human Rights, Welfare, and the Environment in Ghana’s Cocoa-growing communities (2021).
Marah Ajilat is a 3L at University of California Berkeley School of Law.
