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.”
About the author
Lauren Evans@laurenfaceevans
Lauren Evans was formerly an Assistant Editor/Senior Associate in the Office of the President at Devex. As a journalist, she covers international development and humanitarian action with a focus on climate and gender. Her work has appeared in outlets like Foreign Policy, Wired UK, Smithsonian Magazine and others, and she’s reported internationally throughout East Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America.
