2 September 2026Cocoa farming is a major driver of deforestation in West Africa. While sustainability policies like zerodeforestation commitments aim to reduce forest loss from cocoa, they overlook a critical gap. When cocoa expands onto existing farmland, farmers may shift food-crop cultivation into nearby protected forest reserves instead. We analysed satellite imagery and farmer interviews in Ghana to test whether this land displacement occurs and whether sustainability programmes prevent it. From 2000 to 2019, areas with more intensive cocoa farming were associated with greater forest loss inside reserves from food crop cultivation. In 2022-2024, villages with greater exposure to sustainability programmes showed reduced forest loss. Agroforestry (growing shade trees on cocoa farms) showed no protective effect, likely due to minimal adoption. These associations suggest current policies fail to address indirect deforestation from land displacement and highlight the need for land use governance addressing both direct and indirect pressures from cocoa.
Land use change leading to deforestation and forest degradation in tropical forest regions has become a major global challenge, with implications for biodiversity loss, climate change mitigation, food production, and rural livelihoods 1 . Agricultural expansion for both subsistence and commercial purposes remains the leading driver of tropical forest loss, contributing an estimated 90-99% of deforestation across the tropics between 2011 and 2015 2 . Despite international commitments to halt deforestation and restore degraded ecosystems, tropical forests continue to disappear rapidly. In 2022 alone, 4.1 million hectares of tropical primary forest were lost, an increase of 10% from the previous year 3 .
In West Africa, agriculture, particularly cocoa cultivation, is a major driver of forest loss 4 . The region produces over 70% of the world’s cocoa, with Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana dominating production, much of which has occurred through forest conversion, including in protected areas, especially in Côte d’Ivoire 5 .
In Ghana, cocoa cultivation plays a central role in rural economies and is the country’s top agricultural export, but it has also been a key driver of forest loss 5-7 . Since the 1950s, more than 60% of Ghana’s forests have been cleared, with most of the remaining forest now located within protected areas, a broad category that includes national parks, wildlife sanctuaries, and forest reserves 8,9 .
Forest Reserves, the focus of this study, are a subcategory of protected areas that permit regulated and sustainable use, such as the extraction of non-timber forest products, rather than strict protection 10 . This makes forest reserves a key area where conservation goals intersect and often conflict with community land-use pressures. Despite their protective designation, forest reserves continue to experience high rates of degradation and deforestation 5,11,12 .
Deforestation in cocoa landscapes has been widely attributed to direct forest conversion for cocoa expansion 12,13 . In response, a suite of supply chain sustainability initiatives (SSIs), including certification schemes, zero-