Video: Ivory Coast Battles to Save Cocoa-Ravaged Forests

Decades of intensive cocoa farming led to rapid economic development in the Ivory Coast, and turned the country into the world’s top producer of the chocolate ingredient. But clearing land for farming all but wiped out the Ivory Coast’s forests. An ambitious new forestry policy could reverse that. It aims to take back control of government-managed parks and forest reserves. Amourlaye Toure works for the campaign group Mighty Earth. “We need to act, it is an emergency today. Because if we don’t act quickly we risk losing the entirety of our forests. Already 90% of our primary forests in Ivory Coast have been lost between 1960, when we gained independence, until 2000, so in the space of half a century.”

Watch the full video from Reuters World News.