19.09.2022
Cocoa Conference: Many initiatives, little impact
Dr Christiane Hellar with representatives from the other national initiatives for sustainable cocoa.
Dr Christiane Hellar, in her capacity as a board member of the Forum for Sustainable Cocoa, at the signing of the ISCO memorandum of understanding.
The work of the growing number of European initiatives for sustainable cocoa has so far led to very few improvements for cocoa farmers in West Africa.
“There is still a very wide gap between the efforts made in consumer countries and their effectiveness in producing countries,” said Dr Christiane Hellar, deputy director of the Hamburger Stiftung für Wirtschaftsethik, following the ISCO conference in Brussels.
The aim of the ISCO conferences is to strengthen cooperation between European platforms for sustainable cocoa. Following initiatives by Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland, the French ISCO became the fifth national organisation to sign the Memorandum of Understanding in Brussels. On behalf of the German Forum for Sustainable Cocoa – the oldest ISCO, having been established ten years ago – Christiane Hellar signed the Memorandum of Understanding in her capacity as a board member.
The Hamburger Stiftung für Wirtschaftsethik had already published a comprehensive Ethical Risk Assessment of the cocoa sector back in 2017. “The sad conclusion five years on is that, despite the increase in initiatives in the meantime, our publication has lost none of its relevance,” said Christiane Hellar. Particularly with regard to issues such as child labour and a living income, the challenges in the cocoa sector remain as great as ever.