+ 12 January, 2021 – This month, public sector, private sector and civil society organization partners jointly launched the Accessible Soils And Sustainable Environments (ASASE) project in Ghana. Over the coming four years, this groundbreaking initiative will be working towards an environmentally sustainable future for the cocoa sector, tackling deforestation and working to rehabilitate ageing cocoa farms and restore natural forests. ASASE, which also means “land” in the local Ghanaian language Twi, is a 2.3 million Euro project co-funded by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) as part of the Sustainable Development Goals Partnership (SDGP). Driven by a belief that a thriving, climate-smart cocoa sector is possible, this project will work with 5,000 farmers in two of Ghana’s main cocoa producing areas: the Ashanti and Eastern regions. Using a landscape approach, the ASASE project moves away from the traditional focus on the direct supply chain and instead intervenes on 3 levels: working together with cocoa farmers, their rural communities and in local forest remnants. Farmers will receive sensitizations and trainings on agroforestry practices, as well as land and tree tenure documentation to improve the long-term security of their farms. Further, the project will facilitate the conservation of forests and the reforestation of degraded areas through approaches such as Payment for Ecosystem Services, where farmers receive (in-kind) value in return for their efforts to protect or even re-build forests around their cocoa farms.