Changes in the cocoa landscape: who is to benefit?

Presentation ICCO Round Table on Sustainable Cocoa, Accra, 4 oct. 2007

By Gine Zwart

It is my great honour and pleasure to be allowed to speak here in Accra, Ghana, for
such a distinguished audience. I am highly indebted to the cocoa industry as I was
brought up here in Ghana, in Kumasi, where my parents worked for the Ghanaian
government that just after independence, was very rich based on the flourishing cocoa
economy at that time.

I am Gine Zwart and I work for Oxfam Novib. A large development NGO based in
the Netherlands with funding relations with over 800 partners all working on poverty
reduction issues and human rights world wide.

At the moment, though, I have the honour and pleasure to represent a group of 24
NGOs and farmers organisations from 12 different countries from 4 continents all
working towards sustainable cocoa one way or another. This highly committed and
knowleable group of people sat together before this conference to share their ideas
and vision on sustainable cacao. I am sure I can speak on behalf of this group that we
are all very pleased to be here and applaud this excellent initiative of the ICCO to
organise of Round table on Sustainable Cocoa. Our expectations of this conference
are very high and we are surely disappointed that some of the mayor players in the
sector like the World Cocoa Foundation and the ICI International Cocoa Initiative are
not present at this important event.

Yesterday and today people having been talking about a road map to sustainable
cocoa, changing the landscape and all have some commitment or the other towards
change.

So we would like to change the landscape. However what should the landscape look
like? How should it be changed? Clearly that depends very much were you come
from.

Should the landscape become the beautiful desert of Tjaad, or should it become nice,
orderly and flat like the Netherlands? Or would we want the forest of Nigeria? Or the
striking volcanoes of Nicaragua? This really depends where one comes from and
what ones outlook is. To draw a realistic map, therefore diversity of actors is key,
whereby weaker parts of the chain need assistance to be able to understand and draw
the map It is not a given for everybody to be able to climb the round table mountain.
Some need assistance, other might have fear of heights, or others do not want to leave
their own comfortable moral high grounds or their beautiful and fertile valleys.

Now all these metaphors have made us to develop an imaginary map of the cocoa
landscape as Anouk presented yesterday. The artist who made this map based this on
a number of interviews he had with key stakeholder in the cocoa value chain. He is
here and would invite you all to have a look at the maps which are exhibited upstairs
and give further input.
While the map is an interesting tool to discuss the cacao landscape, I am invited here
today to share the thoughts of civil society actors on the role of the private sector and
what responsibility they can take to ensure a sustainable cocoa economy.
In the cocoa sector there a number of large players that dominate the market. This has
both advantages and dis advantages. The advantage being that a big and dominant
player can ensure change, while the disadvantage clearly is that it is difficult for those
with less power to have an influence. Dominant players determine the present
landscape and can also play a role to change it. The challenge will be for these players
to change it for the better of those that are in a weaker position in the whole value
chain: the farmers. When addressing the private sector we address the traders as well
as the processors as the chocolate manufactures. We realise these are all different
players and all have different interests but we have not differentiated at this point.

It is always easy to tell others what to do, but in this case that is what we have been
asked to do by the ICCO: please give us recommendation for the private sector, what
should they do from your NGO/farmers perspective, and similarly give us the same
for governments and for farmers. My colleagues are doing that now in the other
groups. So we did this and I am glad to be in the position to present to you the mayor
recommendations that came out of the work of the earlier mentioned group of NGOs
and farmer groups.

The actions we would expect the private sector to take are:

Reward quality and best practices
Support farmers to reach standards
Buy certified
Child labour issues
Agree on minimum standards for whole industry
Make lessons of projects part of core business
Publish what you pay; publish what you earn

Reward best practices and quality

For this transparency and traceability is essential. I am very happy to hear that
Armajaro stressed this point as essential. It is not easy to reward quality if you do not
know where the quality comes from. We have a partner here in the audience form
Ecuador that has quite some experience on these issues. The roles of intermediaries
need to be defined.

Support farmers to reach standards

and assist them to access to information and technology
The costs are high; the cost of adopting technology is high: the question to be asked is
it worth the farmers investment? Increase productivity, we hear it all the time as
some kind of solution to pull poor farmers out of their poverty. The question I then
ask myself is: why has productivity remained stable over the past 50 years, as we
heard yesterday is the case? The farmer is a rational human being who goes for
optimilsation of her family income as opposed to maximilisation of the cocoa yield.

Millions seems to be spent by the PS to inform consumers about all kind of things, the
same could be done for producers.
The support to access to information could also be in the form of inviting and
supporting the coops and/or other agencies that you deal with when buying and /or
doing projects with to these and other meetings so they can be part of this high level
information sharing.

Buy certified and support farmers to reach the standards certification

And support farmers and local organisations to reach these standards.

Child labour issues

The PS can use its influence to push governments to take their responsibility in
ensuring an enabling environment by as a minimum ratify the ILO standards but also
develop other policies and regulations around this issues. We have heard from our
partner in Cote dIvoir that the government there is seriously working on this, and
more importantly is working with the governments of Mali and Burkina Fasso to deal
with this problem. Because as we all know the root of the child labour problem lies
here and is based on poverty.

The International Cocoa Initiative should be asked to be transparent about their results
and could be further support to expand other countries too on a large scale.

Agree on minimum standards for the whole sector

And ensure the process to develop these has participation of all various stakeholders.
We have heard positive opinions about the RSPO and the 4Cs this morning and these
could indeed serve as examples for the sector.

Make lessons of projects into the core business

and ensure mechanisms for verification of sustainability claims are in place.
. I was very glad to hear this morning from one of the previous speakers that
marketing and/or public relations should not be the driving force behind
sustainability. However I must say I was surprised, not to say shocked to hear
yesterday from the ICCO presentation that the only motivation for the taking
sustainability issues serious is consumers: they seem to demand this. So if consumers
would not care about how the cocoa is produced, under what kind of circumstances
and for what price, the industry would not care either? The concern for the producers
is purely based on the care of the consumer? Surely there will be no business if there
are no consumers to buy the product. However there will also be no chocolate if there
are no farmers!

Publish what you pay and use your power to ask governments to publish what they
earn.
It will greatly enhance transparency if it is clear where different taxes are paid and
where they go to. The recent Global Witness report Hot Chocolate on Cote dIvoir
showed that it is very unclear where taxes are paid and also what happens to these
moneys.

In short what we are saying:

Good companies support good regulation
The title of my presentation: changing the landscape: who is to benefit? I am sure that
it is clear from this presentation that we are convinced that the landscape needs to be
changed, but only if it will be changed in a way in which farmers will be able to
benefit.

Thank you.