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By <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/michael-e-odijie-828090">Michael E Odijie</a>, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-cambridge-1283">University of Cambridge</a>

The chocolate <a href="https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/market-analysis/chocolate-market">industry</a> is worth more than $80 billion a year. But some cocoa farmers in parts of West Africa are poorer now than they were in the 1970s or 1980s. In other areas, artificial support for cocoa farming is creating a debt problem. Farmers are also still under pressure to supply markets in wealthy countries instead of securing their own future. 

In <a href="https://www.academia.edu/36081141/Sustainability_winners_and_losers_in_business-_biased_cocoa_sustainability_programmes_in_West_Africa">research</a> published last year I explored sustainability programmes designed to support cocoa farming in West Africa. My aim was to identify winners and losers.

I looked at initiatives such as <a href="https://www.worldcocoafoundation.org/about-wcf/cocoaaction/">CocoaAction</a>, a $500 million <a href="https://www.academia.edu/36081141/Sustainability_winners_and_losers_in_business-_biased_cocoa_sustainability_programmes_in_West_Africa">“sustainability scheme”</a> launched in 2014, and concluded that they were done in the interests of large multinationals. They did not necessarily relieve poverty or develop the region’s economies. In fact they created new problems. 

To sustain their livelihoods, the cocoa farmers of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana need to diversify away from cocoa production. But multinational chocolate companies need farmers to keep producing cocoa. 

<h2>Diversification</h2>

Farmers choose to diversify their crops for a host of reasons. These include a reduction in the resources they need to produce a crop (such as suitable land), and a reduction in the price they can get for the crop.

Cocoa farming requires tropical forestland. This is limited; it is not possible to keep expanding to new land to keep producing cocoa. So when the land is exhausted, farmers would benefit from diversifying to products like rubber and palm oil. They do not need to grow cocoa for its own sake.

A great deal of diversification occurred <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13504509.2019.1641763?casa_token=SEeqiEebBHIAAAAA:YtWBLoutBFu_HLn6m1HeAo6L07Vd-knX1GE7PivCGXZAlTvgWZlF_idDLuqj1VbdmR-2DaVISHTCQfw">during the cocoa crisis</a> of the 1970s in Ghana. Cereal output increased from 388,000 tonnes in 1964/1965 to over 1 million tonnes in 1983/83, and decreased when cocoa was <a href="http://siteresources.worldbank.org/AFRICAEXT/Resources/258643-1271798012256/Ghana-cocoa.pdf">“revitalised”</a>. The same was the case with coconut, palm oil and groundnut.

But such diversification is more recently being prevented by multinationals and other stakeholders who want cocoa cultivation to continue. Multinationals that depend on cocoa as a raw material openly (and rightly) regard diversification as a risk to their business. So they keep spending on cocoa farming inputs. 

<h2>Why there’s a limit to cocoa</h2>

In West Africa, cocoa has historically been cultivated using slash and burn farming. Forest was cut down and burned before planting, and then, when the plot became infertile, the farmer moved to fresh forestland and did the same again. 

The new land offered fertile soil, a favourable microclimate and fewer pests and diseases. Growing the cocoa took less labour and yielded more.

This explains the link between cocoa farming and deforestation in Côte d&#8217;Ivoire and Ghana. A recent <a href="http://www.mightyearth.org/an-open-secret-illegal-ivorian-cocoa/">investigation</a> showed that since 2000, Ivorian cocoa has been dependent on protected areas. Almost half of Mont Peko National Park, for example, which is home to endangered species, as well as Marahoue National Park has been lost to cocoa planting since 2000.

In Côte d’Ivoire, the area covered by forest <a href="http://www.mightyearth.org/an-open-secret-illegal-ivorian-cocoa/">decreased</a> from 16 million hectares – roughly half of the country – in 1960 to less than 2 million hectares in 2005. 

Forestland is finite. Slash and burn is no longer an option, because so much of the forest is gone. In West Africa, planters are now staying on the same piece of land and reworking it.

This has created its own set of <a href="https://www.academia.edu/36081141/Sustainability_winners_and_losers_in_business-_biased_cocoa_sustainability_programmes_in_West_Africa">problems</a>.

<h2>Rising costs and threats</h2>

In both Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, several <a href="https://www.academia.edu/36081141/Sustainability_winners_and_losers_in_business-_biased_cocoa_sustainability_programmes_in_West_Africa">estimates</a> of the cost of maintaining a cocoa farm show that the investment costs required for replanting have approximately doubled. <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Goetz_Schroth2/publication/261713726_Chocolate_forests_and_monocultures_-_an_historical_review_of_cocoa_growing_and_its_conflicting_role_in_tropical_deforestation_and_forest_conservation/links/00b49535482f8bcb1d000000/Chocolate-forests-and-monocultures-an-historical-review-of-cocoa-growing-and-its-conflicting-role-in-tropical-deforestation-and-forest-conservation.pdf">One estimate</a> of labour investment put the replanting effort at 260 days per hectare, compared with 74 days per hectare for planting using slash and burn. 

The extra labour needed for sedentary cultivation is leading to <a href="https://ilpi.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/20151126-Child-labour-in-the-West-African-Cocoa-Sector-ILPI.pdf">child trafficking</a> and child labour in cocoa cultivation. Child trafficking generally occurs when planters are searching for cheaper sources of labour for replanting. 

Planters who have successfully diversified into other crops have stopped using child labour. In the cocoa industry, however, the use of child labour is increasing. For example, the number of <a href="https://ilpi.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/20151126-Child-labour-in-the-West-African-Cocoa-Sector-ILPI.pdf">child labourers</a> in the Ivorian cocoa industry increased by almost 400,000 between 2008 and 2013. 

There has also been a massive increase in the use of fertilisers and pesticides to aid cocoa production without slash and burn. 

The increased input (labour, fertilisers and pesticides) for replanting land amounts to a higher production cost. It cannot be adjusted by price setting. Cocoa producers have no control over price; they are price takers. So the higher production cost reduces the profit made by cocoa farmers. 

This explains why cocoa producers in Côte d’Ivoire are <a href="http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/542291468243910934/pdf/PAD5080PAD0IDA00Box377382B00PUBLIC0.pdf">poorer now </a> than they were decades ago.

In Ghana, the government, through the cocoa marketing board, <a href="http://www.fao.org/3/I8329EN/i8329en.pdf">COCOBOD</a>, has managed the transition from slash and burn to sedentary farming. The government created a mass spraying programme to control diseases and pests. It also subsidised fertiliser and created a pricing policy that has sometimes amounted to a <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/a06abe2a-c1ab-11e8-84cd-9e601db069b8">government subsidy</a> this links need users to subscribe. Due to the extra free input provided by the government, sometimes supported by NGOs and multinational corporations, farmers have not become poorer in Ghana. But the approach has led to <a href="https://goldstreetbusiness.com/general-news/cocobod-looking-to-refinance-ghc6-bn-debt/">huge debt for COCOBOD</a>. For example, COCOBOD incurred GHc2 billion (US$367 million) debt for subsidising the price of cocoa <a href="https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/business/COCOBOD-incurred-GHC2-billion-debt-in-2017-for-cocoa-price-subsidy-689641#">for the year 2017</a>.

Although cocoa planters are faring well in Ghana, it is not clear that Ghana’s cocoa sector is really a success story. The shift to debt financing has artificially produced <a href="http://siteresources.worldbank.org/AFRICAEXT/Resources/258643-1271798012256/Ghana-cocoa.pdf">the success</a>.

<h2>The way forward</h2>

Cocoa “sustainability” activities are not the way forward. Cocoa sustainability is a new form of colonisation in Africa, because its real goal is to prevent African planters from diversifying away from cocoa into other crops. These programmes keep the cocoa industry going under deteriorating conditions. 

The way forward is to switch from cocoa to crops that do not require forestland (new or exhausted), extra fertilisers or more labour. 

<a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-017-7294-5_2">Research</a> has shown that cocoa planters in Côte d’Ivoire who have diversified into other crops, such as rubber, have succeeded in escaping poverty. 

But that is seen as a major threat to the supply of raw material to Western multinationals. One representative of a large chocolate multinational explained “<a href="https://www.academia.edu/36081141/Sustainability_winners_and_losers_in_business-_biased_cocoa_sustainability_programmes_in_West_Africa">my enemy is not my competitor in the purchase of cocoa, but the rubber industry</a>.” 

In conclusion, Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire have to think about what is best for them instead of what is best for the chocolate industry and consumers in the developed world.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/124761/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important" />

<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/michael-e-odijie-828090">Michael E Odijie</a>, Post Doctoral Researcher, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-cambridge-1283">University of Cambridge</a>

This article is republished from <a href="http://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/ghanas-cocoa-farmers-are-trapped-by-the-chocolate-industry-124761">original article</a>.

Here are three reasons why Ghana’s cocoa farmers are trapped by the chocolate industry

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By Gary van Staden, Head of Research, NKC African Economics. 



Mozambique goes to the polls next Tuesday, October 15, against a backdrop of new investment plans that would significantly improve the country’s economic growth outlook, but also some concern over the possibility of conflict in what is guaranteed to be a disputed outcome.



Presidential,
regional, and national elections are likely to see incumbent President Filipe
Nyusi returned to office, while his ruling Mozambique Liberation Front
(Frelimo) is expected to gain a majority in the national assembly. Some
regional governors, however, may well fall to the opposition Mozambique
National Resistance (Renamo). 



The
presidential race requires an absolute majority, or a second round of voting
will be needed. As things stand, Mr Nyusi may narrowly avoid a run-off given
that Frelimo managed close to 52% of the vote in last year’s local authority
elections, although comparisons between presidential preferences and local
polls would be a stretch.



The
only guaranteed outcome is that Renamo will dispute the results as they have
done for every election since 1994 – usually without any substantive evidence
of misconduct. The problem is that the continuous allegations of rigging and
fraud increase the political temperature, and violence is always a potential
consequence. 



The
other issue is that Renamo has a social media network that works to generate
expectations of misconduct even before the elections are held. 



Make
no mistake, elections in Mozambique are far from perfect. While flawed and
often disorganised, the outcome of elections tends to reflect the will of the
people and usually qualifies for the ‘substantially free and fair’ verdict from
observers. That does not always quell the anger of the losers.



A
more significant problem for Renamo is the potential for infighting to cost it
at the polls. The internal squabbles over leadership and other issues preceded
the death of long-time leader Afonso Dhlakama but have escalated dramatically
since his demise, even resulting in a breakaway by some Renamo fighters who
rejected the leadership of Ossufo Momade and the recently signed peace deal
with the Frelimo government. 



While
the renegade bandits are not regarded as a serious threat, they remain capable
of disruption. A more serious threat comes from a larger body of discontent in
Renamo over the same leadership and policy issues as well as electoral
disagreements. All this plays into Frelimo’s hands.



Recent
announcements by Exxon Mobil highlighting plans to invest more than $500m in
the initial construction phase of its liquefied natural gas (LNG) project has
provided a welcome boost for Mr Nyusi and Frelimo, with the project expected to
pump much-needed cash into the economy. 



Media
reports this week stated that the US oil company’s $30bn Rovuma LNG project,
jointly operated with Italy’s Eni, has a capacity of more than 15 million
tonnes a year (mtpa). The Exxon project, along with Total’s $20bn 13 mtpa
facility and Eni’s $8bn 3.4 mtpa floating plant, means Mozambique will have the
ability to export 31 mtpa of natural gas – about 10% of today’s global market,
Reuters reports. 



The
massive investments into northern Mozambique will fundamentally alter the
socio-economic and political environment of the often-troubled northern
provinces, but at the same time provide an incentive to grapple for a slice of
the pie. Violence by Islamic extremists in the northern province of Cabo
Delgado has resulted in some 200 deaths over the past two years, prompting
Maputo to enlist the assistance of Russian para-military to help quell the
problem.



These
issues – along with the renegade Renamo bandits, the alarming killing of an
electoral official (allegedly by members of a police unit in the
Frelimo-stronghold Gaza province), and the spread of allegations of voter
numbers being inflated – are creating tensions and concern over conflict before
and after the polls. We expect at least some measure of conflict over the next
few days and weeks, mainly because the environment is once again being primed
for such conflict from several quarters – including media. 



Once
again, Mozambique goes to the polls next week amid the same concerns,
allegations, expectations, and predictions that have accompanied the polls for
the past two decades. We expect nothing different this time. Frelimo and Mr
Nyusi are expected to retain power, with a worst-case scenario for the
president of a run-off. If the run-off is avoided, then whatever sporadic and
limited conflict that may get sparked should die down. 



Frelimo
has not always covered itself in glory, but the massive investment and
opportunity for growth and development now afforded in the north must not be
squandered, and this election could be a new beginning.

Op-Ed: While Mozambique’s Frelimo is the favourite it will be no cakewalk

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 Power station in South Africa.
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By <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/mark-new-189846">Mark New</a>, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-cape-town-691">University of Cape Town</a>

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<a href="https://theconversation.com/nz/topics/climate-explained-74664">Climate Explained</a> is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change. 

If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nz

<blockquote>
How much climate change is natural? How much is man made?
</blockquote>

As someone who has been working on climate change detection and its causes for over 20 years I was both surprised and not surprised that I was asked to write on this topic by The Conversation. For <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jul/24/scientific-consensus-on-humans-causing-global-warming-passes-99">nearly all</a> climate scientists, the case is proven that humans are the overwhelming cause of the long-term changes in the climate that we are observing. And that this case should be closed.

Despite this, climate denialists continue to receive <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjuGCJJUGsg">prominence</a> in some media which can lead people into thinking that man-made climate change is still in question. So it’s worth going back over the science to remind ourselves just how much has already been established.

Successive reports by the <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/">Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change</a> – mandated by the United Nations to assess scientific evidence on climate change – have evaluated the causes of climate change. The most recent <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/">special report on global warming of 1.5 degrees</a> confirms that the observed changes in global and regional climate over the last 50 or so years are almost entirely due to human influence on the climate system and not due to natural causes.

<h2>What is climate change?</h2>

First we should perhaps ask what we mean by climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/glossary">defines climate change as</a>:

<blockquote>
a change in the state of the climate that can be identified by changes in the mean and/or the variability of its properties and that persists for an extended period, typically decades or longer.
</blockquote>

The causes of climate change can be any combination of:

<ul>
<li>Internal variability in the climate system, <a href="https://www.nap.edu/read/23552/chapter/5">when various</a> components of the climate system – like the atmosphere and ocean – vary on their own to cause fluctuations in climatic conditions, such as temperature or rainfall. These internally-driven changes generally happen over decades or longer; shorter variations such as those related to El Niño fall in the bracket of climate variability, not climate change.</li>
<li>Natural external causes such as increases or decreases in volcanic activity or solar radiation. For example, every 11 years or so, the Sun’s magnetic field <a href="https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/solar-cycles/en/">completely flips</a> and this can cause small fluctuations in global temperature, up to about 0.2 degrees. On longer time scales – tens to hundreds of millions of years – geological processes can drive changes in the climate, due to shifting continents and mountain building. </li>
<li>Human influence through greenhouse gases (gases that trap heat in the atmosphere such as carbon dioxide and methane), other particles released into the air (which absorb or reflect sunlight such as soot and aerosols) and land-use change (which affects how much sunlight is absorbed on land surfaces and also how much carbon dioxide and methane is absorbed and released by vegetation and soils).</li>
</ul>

<h2>What changes have been detected?</h2>

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/">recent report</a> showed that, on average, the global surface air temperature has risen by 1°C since the beginning of significant industrialisation (which roughly started in the 1850s). And it is increasing at ever faster rates, currently 0.2°C per decade, because the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have themselves been increasing ever faster. 

The oceans are warming as well. In fact, <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/">about</a> 90% of the extra heat trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases is being absorbed by the oceans.

A warmer atmosphere and oceans are causing dramatic changes, including <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/arctic-sea-ice-greenland-melt">steep decreases in Arctic summer sea ice</a> which is profoundly impacting arctic marine ecosystems, increasing sea level rise which is inundating low lying coastal areas such as Pacific island atolls, and an <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/03/180321130859.htm">increasing frequency of many climate extremes</a> such as drought and heavy rain, as well as disasters where climate is an important driver, such as wildfire, flooding and landslides.

Multiple <a href="https://science2017.globalchange.gov/chapter/3">lines of evidence</a>, using different methods, show that <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/spm/">human influence is the only plausible explanation</a> for the patterns and magnitude of changes that have been detected. 

This human influence is largely due to our activities that release greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, as well sunlight absorbing soot. The <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emissions">main sources of these warming gases and particles</a> are fossil fuel burning, cement production, land cover change (especially deforestation) and agriculture.

<h2>Weather attribution</h2>

Most of us will struggle to pick up slow changes in the climate. We feel climate change largely through how it affects weather from day-to-day, season-to-season and year-to-year.

The weather we experience arises from dynamic processes in the atmosphere, and interactions between the atmosphere, the oceans and the land surface. Human influence on the broader climate system acts on these processes so that the weather today is different in many ways from how it would have been. 

One way we can more clearly see climate change is by looking at severe weather events. A branch of climate science, called extreme event or weather attribution, looks at memorable weather events and estimates the extent of human influence on the severity of these events. It <a href="https://www.worldweatherattribution.org">uses weather models</a> run with and without measured greenhouse gases to estimate how individual weather events would have been different in a world without climate change.

<a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-how-climate-change-affects-extreme-weather-around-the-world">As of early 2019</a>, nearly 70% of weather events that have been assessed in this way were shown to have had their likelihood and/or magnitude increased by human influence on climate. In a world without global warming, these events would have been less severe. Some 10% of the studies showed a reduction in likelihood, while for the remaining 20% global warming has not had a discernible effect. For example, <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aae9f9">one study showed</a> that human influence on climate had increased the likelihood of the 2015-2018 drought that afflicted Cape Town in South Africa by a factor of three.

<h2>Adapting to a changing climate</h2>

Weather extremes underlie many of the hazards that damage society and the natural environment we depend upon. As global warming has progressed, so have the frequency and intensity of these hazards, and the damage they cause.

Minimising the impacts of these hazards, and having mechanisms in place to recover quickly from the impacts, is the aim of climate adaptation, as <a href="https://gca.org/global-commission-on-adaptation/home">recently reported by the Global Commission on Adaptation</a>.

As the Commission explains, investing in adaptation makes sense from economic, social and ethical perspectives. And as we know that climate change is caused by humans, society cannot use “lack of evidence” on its cause as an excuse for inaction any more.

<hr>

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This article is part of <a href="https://www.cjr.org/covering_climate_now/covering-climate-partnerships.php/">The Covering Climate Now</a> series
 This is a concerted effort among news organisations to put the climate crisis at the forefront of our coverage. This article is published under a Creative Commons license and can be reproduced for free – just hit the “Republish this article” button on the page to copy the full HTML coding. The Conversation also runs Imagine, a newsletter in which academics explore how the world can rise to the challenge of climate change. <a href="https://theconversation.com/imagine-newsletter-researchers-think-of-a-world-with-climate-action-113443?utm_source=TCUK&amp;utm_medium=linkback&amp;utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&amp;utm_content=CoveringClimateNow">Sign up here</a>.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/123604/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important">

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<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/mark-new-189846">Mark New</a>, Director, African Climate and Development Initiative, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-cape-town-691">University of Cape Town</a>

This article is republished from <a href="http://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/climate-explained-how-much-of-climate-change-is-natural-how-much-is-man-made-123604">original article</a>.

Climate explained: how much of climate change is natural? How much is man-made?

DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) &#8211; Tanzania&#8217;s earnings from gold exports rose 25.1% in the year to August, buoyed by higher output of the precious metal, its central bank said on Thursday.



Gold exports fetched $1.91 billion in the year ending August 31, up from $1.53 billion the previous year.



&#8220;Gold export rose by 25.1 percent … driven by volume, and accounted for more than half of non-traditional exports,&#8221; the Bank of Tanzania said in its latest monthly economic report.



It did not give figures for export volumes.



Africa’s fourth-biggest gold producer after South Africa, Ghana and Mali hopes its mining sector will rebound after a tax crackdown and overhaul of its mining code in 2017 spooked foreign investors.



Tanzanian President John Magufuli, who took office in late 2015, is pushing for more revenue from the sector, which is a relatively small contributor to national output.



In 2017, the government passed laws the industry complained would be costly and onerous.



Among the measures were higher taxes on mineral exports, mandated a higher government stake in some mining operations, and forced the construction of local smelters, a move some companies saw was uneconomic.



Tanzania’s current account deficit widened 30.9% in the year to August, underpinned by an increase in imports.



The gap widened to $2.18 billion in the 12 months to August from $1.67 billion in the same period in 2018.



Imports of goods and services rose 6.1% to $10.52 billion, while total exports rose slightly to $8.77 billion from $8.71 billion previously, the bank said.



Earnings from tourism, the main source of foreign exchange, rose to $2.34 billion from $2.32 billion previously, helped by more visitor arrivals.



Reporting by Fumbuka Ng&#8217;wanakilala; Editing by Clement Uwiringiyimana and Karishma Singh

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