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Environment

Ghost Profits, Carbon Theft: How ESG Platforms and Tech Giants Erase Cocoa Farmers from a $120M Carbon Market

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Adwoa works hard on her 15-acre cocoa farm. With the help of these trees, she’s increased her cocoa harvest by 50%. But her carbon earnings for the whole year? Just $14.72. Meanwhile, big chocolate companies in Europe are making over $120 million by trading carbon credits from trees like hers.
Adwoa is one of 140,000 cocoa farmers in Ghana who joined the REDD+ program. It promised that farmers would get paid for protecting trees and reducing deforestation. But in her region, Western North, nearly 92% of farmers have no formal land documents. Because of this, their trees don’t count in the digital systems used to trade carbon. They are left out.

Environment

The Blind Algorithm: Why AI Detects Child Labor on Cocoa Farms but Ignores Kids in Ghana’s Mining Pits

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The Machine Sees What It’s Told to See
Cadbury’s Cocoa Life program says their AI can spot child labor with 85% accuracy, but only within the GPS locations given to them by cocoa cooperatives. That means if a child like Kofi walks out of the cocoa field and into a nearby mine, the system stops tracking him.
“Our satellites can identify children carrying machetes or cocoa sacks,” said a Nestlé sustainability officer, who asked not to be named. “But if that same child enters a mine pit after school? Our system marks that as ‘out of scope.’”