Once threatened by palm oil and loggers, Cameroon’s forests now face a new driver of deforestation: booming cacao production to supply the European market. A new report by the environmental advocacy group Mighty Earth finds deforestation in Cameroon has accelerated, with the country losing around 782,000 hectares (1.9 million acres), or 4.2% of its forest cover, in just five years since 2020. Previously, Cameroon lost about 6% of its forest cover across two decades from 2000-2020, mainly to logging and palm oil production, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. At least half of the recent forest loss since 2020 occurred in cacao-growing regions, Mighty Earth found. “With the projected growth of the cocoa industry that could really continue to increase,” Thea Parson, report co-author from Mighty Earth, told Mongabay in an interview. In January 2025, Mighty Earth’s Cameroonian partners surveyed cacao-producing areas in Littoral province in the southwest using satellite alerts and field investigations and found that deforestation for cacao plantations is ongoing. In Nkondjock district near Ebo National Park, for example, home to critically endangered western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) and forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis), the team documented fresh forest clearance and newly planted cacao saplings. Europe is Cameroon’s biggest buyer of cocoa, the processed form of the cacao bean, so the recent deforestation for cacao cultivation puts many farmers on a collision course with the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). The critical legislation, due to take effect at the end of 2025, requires importers to ensure…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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