Rainforest Alliance strengthens cocoa certification program

24 Feb 2020 --- The Rainforest Alliance is bolstering its Cocoa Certification Program, the world’s largest scale initiative to drive move sustainable cocoa farming. The organization sees transparency and shared responsibility as “essential to building a sustainable sector’ and these new measures mark the first stage of the Alliance’s enhanced certification program for all sectors that will be published in June and rolled out in the subsequent 12 months. The upgrades reflect Rainforest Alliance’s continued commitment toward addressing core challenges in the cocoa sector: farmer livelihoods, child labor and deforestation.

With its Cocoa Certification Program, the Alliance is amplifying and reiterating its call for all participants in the cocoa industry to take a proactive role in creating improvement through stronger interventions.

The objective is to continue to develop an industry where cocoa producers have the knowledge, resources and incentives to produce in an environmentally, economically and socially responsible fashion. All supply chain actors can fulfill their role through sourcing and pricing practices that promote resilience from price volatility and climate change; and, where governments fulfill their vital role in bringing about sustainable change. 

Above all, the reinvigorated program aims to increase transparency in the certification process throughout the supply chain, notes the Alliance. 

This strengthened of the program facilitates greater accountability and oversight in the cocoa sector. The organization’s goal is to improve the economic, social and environmental conditions of the cocoa industry.

“A significantly stronger program can pave the way for the Rainforest Alliance to reimagine certification on a broad scale,” says Alex Morgan Chief Markets Officer at the Rainforest Alliance. “We are confident that these improvements will go a long way in building more comprehensive interventions to help address child labor, improve the lives of farmers and further curtail the environmental impact.”

“To be clear, our work is not done; nor can we do this alone. It is critical that all participants in the cocoa industry – producers, companies, governments and NGOs – take a more active and permanent role in tackling these issues. The Alliance will remain vigilant and continue to develop approaches that drive impact through a stronger and more sustainable approach.”

The Rainforest Alliance’s strengthened cocoa certification program includes stricter audit rules and enhanced traceability and performance monitoring systems. In order to drive supply chain accountability, the improved certification program also features clear metrics on shared responsibility.

This announcement follows two years of comprehensive analysis on the evolution of Rainforest Alliance’s entire certification process. This analysis identified ongoing challenges in the cocoa sector and helped develop viable approaches. For example, The Rainforest Alliance has invested more than US$2 million in improving the approach to assurance and transparency and will launch a new US$5 million Cocoa Sector Transformation Fund to support more sustainable cocoa farming in West and Central Africa.

Reducing deforestation and eliminating child labor
The Rainforest Alliance is implementing stringent requirements for every individual certified cocoa farmer to have specific GPS coordinates placed in its system across West Africa. This will enable us to analyze the data and location of each cocoa farmer to assess whether they are encroaching on protected forest areas. This data will also allow us to target outreach efforts in communities that surround important forest areas.

The entrenched issue of child labor within the cocoa industry is driven by the social, economic and political context in many countries. Unfortunately, bans on child labor, by themselves, are counter-productive; children can simply be moved to work on unmonitored farms or to other industries. The Rainforest Alliance’s “assess and address” approach further recognizes this reality and instead focuses on supporting farmers to introduce a system that discourages child labor and responds appropriately with any cases that occur.

Edited by Gaynor Selby