• Satellite data and reports from the ground show how a rapid expansion of smallholder cacao farming in southeastern Liberia is causing “alarming” deforestation.
• Large numbers of migrant workers from Côte D’Ivoire have been invited into Liberia by community leaders looking set up cacao plantations.
• Liberia’s remote southeast is one of its most densely forested regions, and also one of its poorest.
• Cacao grown in these new plantations would likely run afoul of new EU regulations barring deforestation-linked commodities, which the bloc is considering delaying.

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