Climate-focused initiatives are helping improve sustainability across global cocoa and coffee supply chains, but expanding these efforts at scale continues to face major obstacles. Integrated landscape management is emerging as a practical solution, with early success seen in countries such as Ghana and Vietnam.
These approaches aim to balance agricultural production with forest protection, water conservation, and climate resilience. While the results are encouraging in pilot regions, turning local success into widespread adoption remains complex and costly.
Local Collaboration Shows Early Results
In Ghana’s Sui River landscape, local governance boards are bringing together cocoa farmers, government agencies, and non-profit organizations to restore degraded forests and promote climate-smart farming. Farmers are encouraged to plant shade trees that protect cocoa crops from rising temperatures while also improving biodiversity. Additional income sources such as beekeeping are being introduced to reduce pressure on forest land.
In Vietnam, partnerships in major coffee-growing provinces are helping farmers reduce chemical inputs and adopt more sustainable practices. These changes are allowing producers to comply with European environmental standards, improving market access and supporting export growth.
Meanwhile, India is preparing to launch a landscape-focused accelerator program designed to attract agri-food companies into regenerative agriculture initiatives at scale.
Corporate Action Driven by Climate and Regulation
Global companies are increasingly investing in landscape-level solutions to protect their supply chains from climate and biodiversity risks. JDE Peet’s has introduced water conservation programs and embedded landscape management into its sourcing strategies to improve long-term resilience.
Nestle is partnering with local stakeholders on reforestation projects in cocoa and coffee regions of Brazil, aiming to stabilize production while restoring ecosystems. These efforts are partly driven by upcoming regulations such as the EU Deforestation Regulation, which will soon require large companies to prove their supply chains are free from deforestation.
Barriers to Wider Adoption Persist
Despite positive outcomes in targeted regions, scaling integrated landscape management remains difficult. High implementation costs, long timelines needed to build trust among local stakeholders, and declining donor funding continue to slow progress. Private sector investment remains limited, with most funding tied to corporate social responsibility programs rather than core business budgets.
At the same time, companies face increasing compliance demands, making it harder to commit long-term capital to landscape initiatives. While early adopters are seeing clear benefits, broader uptake remains slow, particularly in markets where environmental regulations are less strict.
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