Governance of zero deforestation cocoa in West Africa: New forms of public–private interaction

Abstract In March 2017, twelve of the world's leading cocoa and chocolate companies made a collective commitment to end the deforestation associated with the global cocoa supply chain. This marks one of the latest forms of transnational business governance, whereby state actors share the regulation of environmental and social externalities with private authority. This paper responds to the call for more contextual research into the complex policy ecosystems in which zero deforestation commitments are implemented and how transnational private authority is interacting with, and possibly being reconfigured by, domestic governance and territory. Combining policy analysis, field work on cocoa farms, focus groups, and over 45 interviews, this paper provides empirical evidence to explain how business commitments to zero deforestation cocoa interact with domestic political processes to reduce deforestation in key cocoa‐producing countries. The focus is on three top cocoa producer countries in West Africa, where smallholder cocoa farming causes environmental degradation due to deforestation, and socioeconomic progress for smallholders is difficult to achieve. In these countries, the private sector's commitment to reduce deforestation is situated in government‐led programs to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. The findings show that a codependent relationship is evolving between corporate and state‐led efforts to reduce deforestation, where the success of zero deforestation cocoa relies on synergistic public–private interaction. Cocoa intensification without expansion, supply chain traceability, and jurisdictional commodity sourcing are the three main areas of future collaboration identified.