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Growing tall trees to provide shade for cocoa plantations in west Africa could sequester millions of tonnes of carbon, according to a new study.
The research, published in Nature Sustainability, finds that the additional carbon stored in shade trees, such as banana and palm trees, could entirely “offset” cocoa-related emissions in Ghana and Ivory Coast, without reducing production.
West Africa produces about 60% of the world’s cocoa, which is one of the most emissions-intensive crops to grow.
The authors map the shade provided by trees across cocoa agricultural systems in west Africa, then project how much additional carbon storage would be created by expanding it.
An author of the study tells Carbon Brief that cocoa plantations have been a “big” driver of deforestation and the emissions it causes, but the findings show that there is “huge potential” for cocoa to be “part of the solution”.
Cocoa plantations
Cocoa trees thrive in rainforests, as they need abundant rain, high humidity and stable temperatures. They often grow under the shadow of other plants, such as bananas, plantains and palm trees.
Two countries in west Africa – Ivory Coast and Ghana – dominate global cocoa production and are major exporters to the US and Europe.
The shading on the map below shows where cocoa is grown in Ivory Coast (left) and Ghana (right).
Both countries have favourable conditions for cocoa production, including tropical forests – which provide nutrients to the soil – a great deal of rain, warm temperatures and low production costs.
Two million farmers in the region rely on cocoa farming for their livelihoods, the study says, and cocoa contributes 10-20% of the two countries’ gross domestic product.
However, cocoa has “one of the most emissions-intensive footprints of all foods”, the study adds.
Glossary
CO2 equivalent: Greenhouse gases can be expressed in terms of carbon dioxide equivalent, or CO2e. For a given amount, different greenhouse gases trap different amounts of heat in the atmosphere, a quantity known as… Read More
A 2022 study found that producing 1kg of cacao beans in Ivory Coast releases, on average, 1.5kg of CO2-equivalent (CO2e) – largely a result of deforestation. Since 2000, cocoa plantations have driven 37% of forest loss in protected areas in Ivory Coast and 13% of the loss in protected areas in Ghana.
Cocoa plantations cover more than three-and-a-half times as much land as the remaining intact forests in west Africa, according to the study.
Dr Wilma Blaser Hart, a research fellow at the University of Queensland and an author of the study, tells Carbon Brief:
“That land-use change is what makes cocoa such a carbon-intensive product, because there has just been so much forest loss for being able to produce cocoa.”
Shade-grown cocoa crops
Agroforestry is an agricultural method that combines the planting of crops with trees. Agroforestry can raise incomes for farmers and provide ecosystem services, including soil health improvement, biodiversity conservation and carbon sequestration.
The study investigates the amount of carbon that is currently stored in cocoa plantations in Ivory Coast and Ghana, as well as the potential carbon sequestration if agroforestry were expanded in these countries.
The authors use drones and machine learning to map the cover of shade trees, finding that 13% of the combined area of Ivory Coast and Ghana is currently covered with these trees.
In the study, “shade trees” refers to any trees taller than eight metres – the maximum height of cocoa trees.
The map below shows the area of shade trees in cocoa-growing areas specifically for 2022. The colours indicate levels of tree cover from 0-15% (blue), through to 15-30% (green) and more than 30% (yellow).
The map reveals that cocoa production is “overwhelmingly dominated by full-sun monocultures and low shade-agroforestry”, the study says.
Using satellite data, global maps of tree canopy height and on-ground verification, the researchers map the amount of “aboveground biomass” held by cocoa plantations.
Aboveground biomass comprises all living vegetation that lies above the soil – trees, leaves and other plant matter.
The map below shows the amount of aboveground biomass in both countries. The areas in yellow are those with the highest biomass and, therefore, more stored carbon.
The authors project that if all cocoa plantations increased their cover of shade trees to at least 30%, the additional, taller trees could sequester an “enormous” amount of carbon – 307m tonnes of CO2e (MtCO2e) – enough to fully counterbalance the current cocoa-related emissions in both countries, without reducing production.
Blaser Hart tells Carbon Brief:
“Cocoa itself is a small tree. [It] can grow up to about eight metres tall, so it also sequesters carbon. [But] we found that tall trees that are towering high above cocoa – often timber trees – sequester much more carbon than cocoa.”
In addition, she says, the cover from large trees is “much better for cocoa” since it protects them during the hottest hours of the day, while allowing light through. They also shed large amounts of “litter”, which gets incorporated as organic matter into the soil, sequestering carbon from the atmosphere.
Barriers and limitations
The authors acknowledge several limitations to their study.
For example, they say, the analysis may underestimate the proportion of shade tree cover by excluding trees shorter than eight metres. They also note that the analysis does not consider all of the features of agroforestry systems, such as which species are planted.
Kayeli Laurence is a PhD student of landscape ecology at Jean Lorougnon Guédé University in Ivory Coast and an expert in agroforestry. The researcher, who was not involved in the study, tells Carbon Brief:
“The identified limitations call for caution, particularly when it comes to local, small-scale analyses. However, they do not undermine the general trends highlighted by the study.”
Laurence notes that the study results are consistent with other research highlighting the carbon sequestration potential of agroforestry systems. She says that the projection of carbon sequestration is “ambitious, but credible”. However, she adds:
“In practice, achieving this goal will strongly depend on local conditions: availability of species, technical support, farmers’ willingness and, above all, economic incentives.”
The study also acknowledges that smallholder farmers in west Africa “face several barriers” to adopting agroforestry, including limited incentives and insecure land tenure.
The non-profit scientific research organisation Project Drawdown notes that implementing a certain category of agroforestry called “multistrata” – a combination of long-lasting crops and multiple layers of trees or vegetation – in humid tropical climates would cost more than $1,300 per hectare.
Blaser Hart tells Carbon Brief:
“That’s a huge cost. And it’s not money that farmers have available.”
International landscape
Blaser Hart says that cocoa agroforestry provides further benefits to ecosystems, besides carbon sequestration. These include cooling the air, improving soil fertility and nutrient cycling and providing habitat for wildlife. She adds:
“We’re currently doing a big study on how agroforestry can help to provide habitat for birds. There also seems to be a bit of mammals that use cocoa agroforestry systems. In Ghana, we’re finding quite a bit of genets and civets that are in these systems. From Brazil, there’s a bit of research in the Atlantic Rainforest that shows that some monkeys use them as permanent habitat and others just as corridors to move through.”
Agroforestry is included in the climate commitments of around 40% of developing countries under the Paris Agreement, according to the study.
At the corporate level, the cocoa industry has made commitments to plant “millions of shade trees in agroforests to improve the sustainability of the sector”, the study says.
Blaser Hart tells Carbon Brief that the researchers hope the work will encourage the cocoa industry to better plan its agroforestry interventions, “rather than just haphazardly handing out trees here and there”.
Laurence suggests that policymakers should improve climate finance to support farmers in transitioning to sustainable agricultural systems, while chocolate producers and certification bodies should make stronger commitments to create “real demand for sustainable cocoa produced through agroforestry”.
Ultimately, the study notes that the methods it developed to assess the status of trees in agricultural systems can be used for other commodities grown in agroforests, such as coffee.
The post Growing trees for shade has ‘enormous’ potential for cutting cocoa emissions appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Growing trees for shade has ‘enormous’ potential for cutting cocoa emissions
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An older teaching about land acknowledgement
As I have come to understand the spirit and intention of land acknowledgement, I often return to fond memories of my grandmother and her words of wisdom. She taught that the health of the places we call home comes first, because the wellbeing of the people depends on it.
In her teaching, land acknowledgement began with the land. Long before it became a paragraph read at the start of a meeting, it was a way of recognizing a homeland: its waters, its species, its seasons, and the spirit that revealed whether the place was well.
Her teaching echoes a practice found across many Indigenous Nations. Haudenosaunee gatherings, for example, have long opened with the Ohén:ton Karihwatéhkwen, the Thanksgiving Address, often translated as “the words that come before all else.” The speaker greets and gives thanks to the people, the earth, the waters, the plants, the animals, the winds, the sun, the moon and the stars. Only after everything that sustains life has been acknowledged does the gathering turn to its own business.
That order changes what an acknowledgement is for. Its purpose was to share the story of a place with neighbours and to draw them into the work of tending it. People entered the story second, as the ones responsible for what had just been named.
Understood this way, an acknowledgement does more than open a meeting. It asks us to reconsider where we stand, and what we owe the ground beneath us.
Nations among nations
In her teaching, people are one nation among many. The salmon are a nation. So are the cedars, the bison, the medicine plants, and the pollinators. Each belongs to a place, carries its own responsibilities, and offers gifts no other nation can give.
This idea of kinship runs through many Indigenous philosophies. The phrase “all my relations,” heard in ceremonies and gatherings across Turtle Island, is a reminder that family extends beyond people to the animals, plants, waters and lands that make life possible. Some Indigenous languages carry the same understanding in their grammar, speaking of many plants, animals and natural forces as living beings rather than objects.
Sovereignty, understood through this relationship, is a kind of standing more than a form of control. Each nation belongs fully to its place and carries its share of that place’s life. No nation thrives alone, and none thrives by taking over the whole.
The land is also the source of instruction. Over generations, people watched how a river valley or a stretch of prairie kept itself well: who arrived when, who fed whom, and how much could be taken before the giving stopped. In my grandmother’s telling, those observations became instructions, and those instructions helped shape law and protocol. They guided when to harvest, where to camp, how to enter a neighbour’s territory, and what was owed in return.
Indigenous legal scholars today often describe this as law that comes from the land itself, learned by watching how living systems sustain one another. A plainer name for it is knowing how to live somewhere.
The host and the guest
One of the clearest teachings in this understanding of the world is the relationship between host and guest. My grandmother invited us to recognize that relationship in the lives of plants and animals.
A host prepares the place before anyone arrives. A beaver family dams a stream, and the pond becomes a home for fish, frogs, birds and plants. A fallen tree becomes a nurse log, feeding the next generation of seedlings as it returns to the soil.
A host offers first. A flowering plant sets out nectar. A berry bush ripens fruit. These provisions come in their own season, not whenever a visitor happens to want them.
A host also makes its presence known. Birdsong, scent and the marks left along a trail tell newcomers that a place is already inhabited. The visitor does not arrive in an empty world.
The guest has responsibilities too. A guest attends to the season and to what the place can offer. A guest does not assume that everything within reach is theirs to take. A guest leaves something that helps sustain the relationship.
A bee takes nectar and carries pollen. Read through this teaching, that exchange offers an image of visiting well: receiving a gift while helping the host continue its life.
Many Indigenous harvesting protocols carry the same ethic into daily practice: ask before taking, take only what is needed, offer thanks, and leave enough for others and for the plant or animal to recover.
None of this suggests that every relationship in nature is peaceful or generous. These are ways of seeing responsibilities that people can learn to carry.
Everyone is both
No being is only a host or only a guest.
A tree makes room for other life while depending on soil, water, sunlight, fungi, and relationships beyond itself. People, too, may welcome others into their homes while remaining dependent on the larger homeland that sustains them.
The distinction between host and guest is therefore about roles, not ranks. Everyone receives. Everyone has something to give.
The question is whether the exchange sustains the place.
A visitor who takes without restraint leaves less for those who come next. A host who neglects the place has less to offer. Both have responsibilities, and neither can fulfil them alone.
This is the heart of reciprocity, a principle found across Indigenous philosophies: relationships stay healthy when gifts move in both directions. The Haudenosaunee teaching of the seventh generation extends that exchange across time, asking that decisions made today leave the place well for those not yet born.
Mutual benefit begins here, with the recognition that different beings carry different gifts and obligations.
What people carry forward
My grandmother’s teaching connects these relationships to the ways people meet their neighbours.
The host prepares a place, offers food and rest, and explains where the visitor has arrived. The guest makes themselves known, explains why they have come, listens to the terms of the visit, and brings something in return. The gift may be material. It may also be labour, knowledge, news, or a commitment to help.
Nations around the Great Lakes carried this ethic into treaty. The Dish with One Spoon, an agreement among the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe and allied Nations, describes shared hunting grounds as a single dish. Everyone eats from it with one spoon, takes only what they need, leaves enough for others, and keeps the dish clean. The Two Row Wampum, between the Haudenosaunee and European newcomers, shows two vessels travelling side by side on the same river, each keeping its own ways and neither steering the other.
In this understanding, acknowledgement is more than naming the people associated with a territory. It is learning enough about a homeland to behave responsibly within it.
Whose home is this? What sustains it? What laws and agreements guide our presence? What can we receive, and what must we return?
These questions make acknowledgement a relationship rather than a recital.
They also make it diplomatic. A guest who recognizes the host’s homeland recognizes that they have entered a place with its own relationships and responsibilities. A host who welcomes the guest makes room for an encounter governed by those relationships.
Neither arrives without standing. Neither arrives without obligations.
Beginning with place
I write from the shores of the Bay of Quinte. Here, the teaching asks me to begin with the water, the shoreline, and the life they sustain. Before I describe myself, I must attend to where I am.
That does not make people or history less important. It places them within the homeland that gives them meaning. The people, their laws, their agreements, and their responsibilities all belong to the place.
In a time of longer fire seasons, troubled waters, and uncertainty about what the next season will bring, this teaching asks something difficult and useful of us: pay attention before you speak.
An acknowledgement cannot tell the story of a place if the speaker has stopped noticing it.
The land came first. Beginning there again means learning to name what sustains us, and accepting that what sustains us also asks something of us.
By Rye Karonhiowanen Barberstock
Photo by Andrik Langfield on Unsplash
The post The Land Came First appeared first on Indigenous Climate Hub.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels and cement are projected to fall by around 0.4% in 2026 to 38.2bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2), according to new figures from the Global Carbon Project.
This guest post is by:
- Dr Zeke Hausfather, Carbon Brief’s climate science contributor
- Prof Pierre Friedlingstein, chair of mathematical modelling of climate systems at the University of Exeter and part of the Global Carbon Project team.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels and cement are projected to fall by around 0.4% in 2026 to 38.2bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2), according to new figures from the Global Carbon Project.
The 21st edition of the annual “global carbon budget” report, published today, says that this small decline is largely due to a 1.9% drop in emissions from oil and the energy shock triggered by the Iran conflict and the closure of the strait of Hormuz.
Emissions from coal continue to increase slightly.
The Global Carbon Project’s projections for fossil fuel and cement CO2 emissions in 2026 are preliminary, with a range that spans a fall of -1.5% to a rise of +0.6%.
This means a small increase in emissions can not be ruled out.
Emissions from land-use change, such as deforestation, are projected to rise in 2026.
This is primarily driven by peat fires and forest degradation in south-east Asia and is linked to the development of a strong El Niño event this year.
As a result, total CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and land use are projected to reach a record high of 43.3GtCO2 in 2026 – marginally above 42.8GtCO2 in 2025.
Research published alongside the report by the same team in Nature Climate Change finds that the growth in solar, wind and electric vehicles (EVs) now offsets around two-thirds of the emissions th