(Bloomberg) -- Ivory Coast will spend 616 billion CFA francs ($1.1 billion) over the next 10 years to rehabilitate and regrow the country's forests that have shrunk as cocoa output expanded, a government spokesman said.
The West African country, the world's biggest producer and exporter of the chocolate ingredient, had 16 million hectares of forests in 1960, but this has fallen to 3 million hectares, Bruno Kone told reporters in the commercial capital, Abidjan.
Besides protection and rehabilitation, the project “also takes into account Ivory Coast's international commitments to preserve the environment and assist in the fight against climate change,” Kone said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Katarina Hoije in Accra at khoije@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Hilton Shone at hshone@bloomberg.net, Helen Nyambura
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