Cocoa power: Creating climate-friendly confections in the Philippines

Who doesn’t love chocolate? That’s the logic of Louise Mabulo, who founded the Cacao Project in the aftermath of a super typhoon that struck the Philippines in 2016, decimating the vast majority of the country’s agricultural land. What was still standing, Mabulo noticed, were the cocoa trees. Cocoa is not only climate resilient, it’s also in wide demand — in 2021, the global cocoa bean trade was worth nearly $9.6 billion. Its profitability is a key part of its appeal, Mabulo told Devex President and Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar at the Clinton Global Initiative last month. “I always say this: You can't teach someone who's hungry or someone who's living on day-to-day subsistence about food security, or climate change, or environmentalism,” she said. “You have to create a system where they can operate that's already inherently working with biodiversity in nature.” To this end, the Cacao Project works with farmers to transition their land to more regenerative systems like agroforestry, as well as offer education on resilience and what it means to make a climate-smart livelihood. Mabulo’s goal isn’t to ramp up cocoa production in pace with global demand as much as it is to create long-term, sustainable job security for farmers, and keep production local. As with so many things, farmers often never see the outcome of their efforts, since cocoa is shipped away and processed elsewhere. “Our goal is to localize that system so that farmers know what the product becomes, they have control over the product, and how they market and sell it,” Mabolu said. Not long ago, the idea that agriculture and sustainability could go hand in hand seemed outlandish, she added. But as the effects of climate change become ever-more dire, efforts like the Cacao Project are becoming more common. “Initiatives like mine, not just in the Philippines, but different initiatives suited to their local ecosystems and conditions … is what’s needed,” she said. Devex was a media partner of the Clinton Global Initiative. We maintain full editorial control of this content.