By Ahone Heidi
A new European Union Regulation 2023/1115 on deforestation, that goes into force from December 30, 2024 threatens many of Cameroon’s export products including key cash crops like Cocoa and Coffee.
The decision triggered a crisis meeting between the ministry of trade, agriculture, forestry and wildlife, land tenure, Environment and Nature Protection, Labor and Social Security, heads of Cocoa and Coffee Board, the Administrator of the Cocoa and Coffee Sector Development Fund (FODECC), the President of the Executive Committee of the Inter-professional Cocoa and Coffee Council, the Executive Secretary of the CICC and a delegation from the European Union headed by H.E Jean -Marc Chataigner.
The meeting chaired by Cameroon Minister of Commerce Luc Magloire Mbarga Atangana, Thursday 18 July 2024 in Yaoundé, geared at clarifying and examining challenges and implication of the new regulations on the Cameroon’s cocoa and coffee export markets.
Regulation (EU) 2023/1115 adopted by the European Parliament will hence exclude certain commodities and products associated with deforestation and forest degradation from the European markets.
“The new European regulation will hence ban products that have contributed to deforestation or forest degradation , from the European markets,” a press release from EU states.
It notes that “all forms of deforestation and forest degradation by agricultural expansion linked to the production of commodities like soy, beef, palm oil, wood, cocoa, coffee, rubber and some of their derived products, such as leather, chocolate, tyres, or furniture, will be exempted from European markets.
As a major economy and consumer of these commodities linked to deforestation and forest degradation, the EU is partly responsible for this problem and it wants to lead the way to solving it, the release notes.
The new EU rules are to guarantee that the products EU citizens consume do not contribute to deforestation or forest degradation worldwide, it stated.
“The overall objective of the new rules is to bring down greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity loss by promoting the consumption of ‘deforestation-free’ products and reducing the EU’s impact on global deforestation and forest degradation,” the EU release states.
Cameroon Gov’t Panics
The significance of the new regulation for Cameroon no longer needs to be emphasised given that 78% of cocoa exports and 68% of coffee exports are destined for Europe, according to the Minister of Commerce.
“At the current price level which is around 5000 CFA francs/kg of cocoa (5000,000 CFA francs/tons, and for an exported production of around 300…. Tons, this represents remuneration paid directly to the producer, over a single campaign, of the order of 1,500 billion CFA francs,” the Minister pointed out.
Compliance Readiness
The European Union urged Cameroon authorities to ensure the traceability of these exports products, guaranteeing “zero deforestation” production and respecting legality requirements.
Cameroon authorities however assured that cocoa and coffee farming practiced in the country use agroforestry system, less destructive to the environment than the intensive methods of other producing countries.
“We are required to respect the regulations imposed on us. For us, this is not an obstacle since we are prepared to face these new requirements, we have anticipated them. When we produce cocoa and coffee, we do not deforest. We grow our cocoa and coffee under the trees. We are in a process of agroforestry which means that we preserve forests,” Cameroon’s Minister of agriculture guaranteed.
The Minister of commerce however Cameroon is in the process of diversifying its export market channels for cocoa and coffee.
“There is the African market with high potential which is developing. There is Russia, the Asian market, we are in the process of developing new markets. We should not think that this is an obstacle to the production of cocoa and coffee. It will not prevent us from producing cocoa and coffee. This regulation is not an obstacle for Cameroonian production, 90% of our plantations are geo-referenced. That is to say beyond the volumes placed on the European market,’ the minister said.
