Cameroon Launches Initiative To Double Coffee Production While Aiming To Protect Forests – CoffeeTalk

Cameroon’s Central African Forest Initiative (CAFI) and the Cameroon government have signed a $60 million agreement to fund the development of cacao and coffee production, as well as protect the country’s forests. The fund will support projects aimed at sustainably raising production from existing agricultural land, rather than expanding into forested areas. However, Cameroonian forestry expert Ghislain Fomou says it is unclear if cacao and coffee production can be increased without causing more deforestation.

Cameroon has lost an average of 110,000 hectares of forest per year since 2013 — in 2023, forest loss spiked to 204,000 hectares (504,000 acres) — casting doubt on claims it is possible to both double commercial cacao and coffee production and reduce deforestation. A June 2024 study published in the journal PLOS ONE identified cacao cultivation as one of the drivers of deforestation in the Congo Basin and in Cameroon in particular. Its authors suggested mitigation measures such as agroforestry systems, combined with better land planning and incentives for sustainable agricultural and forestry practices, as ways to reduce the risks of deforestation linked to cacao.

The $60 million fund will be supported by the European Union, Norway, France, South Korea, and other countries, and will back four major projects between 2025 and 2027. One of these projects is the Development Fund for the Cocoa and Coffee Sectors, worth approximately $20 million, which will enable 30,547 producers to receive payment for environmental services, including establishing deforestation-free cacao or coffee plantations and intensifying production on existing plantations covering approximately 92,000 hectares (227,300 acres).

A second $20 million project will develop and implement incentive mechanisms for the management of high-value, high-carbon forests in the Grand Mbam region in central Cameroon, as well as support low-emission development of selected value chains. Another $6.4 million of funding is intended to reconcile the demand for land and resources for economic growth with sustainable ecosystem management in the regions of Centre, South, and Littoral. The fourth project will allocate $13.6 million to support the intersectoral and multilevel coordination of Cameroon’s forest and climate policy and the promotion of a green economy.

The CAFI secretariat said the projects aim to promote sustainable intensification and increased productivity of existing agricultural lands to meet the growing demand for food. However, the possibility of achieving sustainable, deforestation-free cacao and coffee production is ambiguous, and funding from CAFI could also have been directed toward agricultural sectors that are even more damaging to Cameroon’s forests.

CAFI says it will achieve the partnership’s goals of preserving and sustainably managing Cameroon’s forests by strengthening intersectoral governance processes to ensure Cameroon remains economically competitive and improving the well-being of the population through sustainable forest management.

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