Ivory Coast Evicts Cocoa Farmers to Save Forests

Before the morning mists had broken over Ivory Coast's Mont Peko National Park, thousands of newly homeless cocoa farmers and their families began to stir, fetching water and lighting cooking fires outside Sylvain Zongo's church at the forest edge.

"I don't know what I am going to do. All I can do is pray to God, otherwise it breaks my heart," the pastor said, surveying a scene more evocative of the West African nation's civil war years than its relative prosperity today.

This is the human toll of a government crackdown on illegal farmers that could leave hundreds of thousands destitute, dent gross domestic product and inflame tensions left over from years of unrest.

It is the consequence of what may be Ivory Coast's last chance save the most rapidly disappearing forest in Africa, home to endangered chimpanzees, forest elephants and the rare pygmy hippopotamus.

http://news.trust.org/item/20160906060220-c4mow

jbdodane

#solar