Removing barriers to access finance from the National Cacao Plan in Costa Rica: cacao agroforestry for rural development and landscape restoration and adaptation

Our project aims to remove technical, value chain and financial barriers for farmers to participate in the Costa Rican Plan Nacional de Cacao while ensuring a reduced vulnerability of farmers and biodiversity to climate change (CC). We will help smallholder farmers and communities adapt to CC through agroforestry practices for Cacao production, ensure that coffee producers threatened by CC have an option to shift to cacao production, and generate a strategy that maximizes the positive impact on biodiversity conservation and resilience from local to country levels.

Ecom is one of the biggest global traders of coffee, cacao and cotton sugar. Our goal is to secure the long-term future of coffee, cocoa and cotton – a future where farmers are resilient to the impacts of climate change and changing commodities prices, and where their livelihoods improve. A future where crops are grown with efficient use of resources that protect and regenerate nature, and where transparent, traceable supply chains ensure long-term sustainable change. The Cornell Lab is dedicated to advancing the understanding and protection of the natural world, the Cornell Lab joins with people from all walks of life to make new scientific discoveries, share insights, and galvanize conservation action. Ecom and The Cornell Lab have been collaborating since 2017, developing a Blueprint for Landscape Restoration through Agroforestry, from which this project builds upon.

Project Status

In prior stages, the barriers that are present in the cocoa chain in Costa Rica were identified and analysed. Currently, initial implementing actions have been aimed at generating potential solutions to address the barriers initially identified. This period has been strategically used to establish the basis for potential interventions aimed at optimizing the Costa Rican cocoa chain. Attention has focused on specific strategies aligned with the results of our analysis, aimed at improving the efficiency, sustainability, and profitability of the cocoa production chain. In addition, the project team has a reliable tool to assess bird biodiversity in all cacao-productive areas of Costa Rica, allowing them to pinpoint the areas where cocoa agroforestry might best function as climate shelters to benefit biodiversity and biodiversity-mediated ecosystem services in the future. These two branches of information will allow for the development of a blueprint for cocoa production in a climate change scenario that will be backed not only by sustainable agro-inputs but also by biodiversity-mediated ecosystem services and nature-based solutions.