Cybersecurity
World’s Biggest Cocoa Grower Is Wiping Out Its Rainforests
- Ivory Coast farmers invade protected forests to plant cocoa
- Less rainfall is one reason why government now wants them out
An illegal cocoa plantation in the Cavally protected forest, Ivory Coast.
Photographer: Olivier Monnier/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
After disease ravaged his cocoa farm, Philippe Zongo walked into one of West Africa’s last remaining rainforests to hack out new acreage.
Like thousands of young men from Ivory Coast and more arid neighboring countries, Zongo set out to find the best soil to plant new cocoa trees. He found it in the western Cavally forest, an area bigger than Chicago where chimpanzees live under the canopy of trees 100 feet tall.