ZURICH, Switzerland – Barry Callebaut has a target to become forest positive by 2025. This means they have to develop a greater understanding of where deforestation is at risk of occurring in our supply chain. For cocoa, Barry Callebaut has worked in close partnership with the renowned environmental sustainability consultancy, Quantis, to develop an innovative carbon footprinting assessment to evaluate the impacts of land-use change (LUC) and deforestation driven by cocoa farming.
Through the combination of GPS, satellite imagery and farm-level data, this new assessment enables to gain a better understanding of the contribution of each farm or cooperative that we source from to our direct land-use change emissions.
“At Quantis, we’re proud of developing this cutting-edge carbon footprinting assessment with Barry Callebaut to evaluate the impacts of cocoa farming on land-use change and deforestation”, said Michele Zollinger, Natural Capital Solutions Lead at Quantis.
“It provides a more realistic snapshot of what is happening on the ground, paving the way for more precise footprints, reduction strategies and action plans to effectively tackle land-use change emissions in the cocoa supply chain. We hope this will inspire the wider industry to action and accelerate sustainable transformation.”
“Having a greater understanding of where deforestation is at risk of occurring, we can also establish a better link between forest protection activities and carbon accounting at farm level”, says the company. “Importantly, using satellite data also helps us to analyze deforestation events on the ground in greater detail. This provides us with the opportunity to engage with cocoa farming communities on the adoption of natural resource management and avoid activities; such as land-clearing for agriculture, which can result in deforestation.”
Barry Callebaut enables customers to account for the carbon impact of their cocoa and chocolate
The development of this new assessment also helps customers with calculating their carbon impact more accurately and will enable us to provide carbon neutral chocolate. Customers can input recipes into our carbon footprint calculator, get a clear view on the impact of their chocolate, and learn more about the methodology behind the numbers.
Working together to create a more sustainable chocolate and cocoa industry
“As part of our Forever Chocolate commitments, we aim to be carbon and forest positive by 2025”, the company also says. “But we also look beyond our own chocolate and cocoa supply chain. We are working to create a movement to address the biggest challenges in our industry and we can only do this by working together to develop innovative and scalable solutions.
This is why we recommend the assessment to other companies that are committed to forest protection or would like to link forest protection activities at farm level with their carbon goals.”
