Climate and Biodiversity Crises Deepen Europe’s Chocolate Supply Threat, Report Warns
A new report suggests that escalating climate change and biodiversity loss are intensifying the European Union’s “chocolate crisis,” with cocoa among six key food commodities largely sourced from environmentally vulnerable countries.
In 2023, more than two-thirds of the EU’s imports of cocoa, coffee, soy, rice, wheat, and maize came from nations poorly equipped to cope with climate change, according to research by UK consultancy Foresight Transitions.
For cocoa, maize, and wheat, over two-thirds of imports originated from countries where biodiversity is considered degraded, the analysis found.
The researchers argue that climate-related impacts on agriculture are being compounded by declining biodiversity, which is making food production systems less resilient.
“These aren’t just abstract threats,” said the lead author of the report, Camilla Hyslop. “They are already playing out in ways that negatively affect businesses and jobs, as well as the availability and price of food for consumers, and they are only getting worse.”
The study matched Eurostat trade data with two global environmental indices to assess the EU’s exposure to ecological risks across its food supply chains. These included the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index—which rates countries based on their climate vulnerability and institutional capacity—and the UK Natural History Museum’s Biodiversity Intactness Index, which compares present-day wildlife populations to historical levels.
The findings reveal that most of the EU’s food imports come from countries classified as “low-medium” in terms of climate readiness and “low-medium” or “medium” in biodiversity intactness.
Certain commodities were found to be particularly exposed. For instance, 90% of maize imported into the EU came from countries with limited climate adaptation capacity, and 67% came from areas with compromised biodiversity. Cocoa, a crop not grown within Europe, had the highest risk profile: 96.5% of imports came from countries ranked low in climate preparedness, and 77% from countries with reduced biodiversity.
The report highlights that the chocolate industry is already under pressure from rising sugar prices—partly due to extreme weather—and supply constraints on cocoa. Much of Europe’s cocoa comes from West African nations where climate and biodiversity risks are converging.
Commissioned by the European Climate Foundation, the report calls on major chocolate companies to fund climate adaptation and biodiversity initiatives in cocoa-producing countries.
“This is not an act of altruism or ESG [sustainable finance], but rather a vital de-risking exercise for supply chains,” the authors wrote. “Ensuring farmers are in their supply chains paid a fair price for their produce would allow them to invest in the resilience of their own farms.”
Commenting on the findings, Paul Behrens, an environmental scientist at the University of Oxford and author of a textbook on sustainable food systems, said the report “paints an extremely worrying picture” of food supply resilience.
“Policymakers like to think of the EU as food-secure because it produces quite a lot of its own food,” he said. “But what this report shows is that the EU is vulnerable to climate and biodiversity risks in some vital food supply chains.”
While coffee, rice, and soy showed fewer overall vulnerabilities, the study identified specific regions of concern. For example, Uganda—responsible for 10% of the EU’s coffee imports in 2023—was rated low in climate readiness and only “low-medium” in biodiversity health.
Joseph Nkandu, founder of Uganda’s National Union of Coffee Agribusinesses and Farm Enterprises, stressed the need for greater access to international climate finance to help farmers adapt to increasingly extreme weather.
“The weather in Uganda is no longer predictable,” he said. “Heatwaves, prolonged dry spells and erratic rains are withering our coffee bushes and damaging production.”
Oxford researcher Marco Springmann, who was not involved in the study, added that moving toward healthier, more sustainable diets would be essential if food systems are to endure mounting climate shocks.
“About a third of grains and basically all imported soy is used to feed animals,” he said. “Aiming to make those supply chains more resilient therefore misses the point that this supports the very products that are to a large degree responsible for what is being tried to protect from.”
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