Release of the DISCO Annual Report 2023 and Individual Action Plans

The Dutch Initiative on Sustainable Cocoa (DISCO) is pleased to present its 2023 Annual Report and the individual Action Plans developed by its signatories.

This provides key insights about the partnership's progress towards its three impact goals to enable cocoa farming households to earn a living income, end cocoa-related deforestation and take the necessary actions to end child labour. It also outlines each signatory's specific shorter-term commitments and actions to contribute to reaching these goals.

Is the DISCO partnership on track toward reaching its goals?

The DISCO partnership efforts seem to progress at the first stages of living income strategies but need accelerated action and scaling.

Signatories demonstrated increased actions in measuring income gaps for households within their supply chain and implementing strategies to reduce or close living income gaps. The partnership is progressing towards understanding the gaps between the actual income and living income benchmarks and has relatively ambitious plans for increased measurement of gaps in the upcoming years. However, more action is required to scale strategies to close living income gaps throughout the whole supply chain. Although almost all signatories have started implementing living income strategies, most of these strategies still remain at small scale pilot level. As defined in the action plans, there are only very limited actors that have ambitious scaling plans. To ensure the partnership is on track towards reaching its goals, the sector needs to accelerate actions and scale them up to larger parts of the supply chain to actually achieve concrete impact in closing living income gaps.

The DISCO partnership is on track to meet its ending deforestation targets in the upcoming years.

A significant portion of DISCO signatories have made improvements in 2023, expanding their share of deforestation-free cocoa and increasing traceability levels. Some are even showing positive examples of 100% deforestation-free cocoa, moving the entire partnership closer to the target. As per the ambitions as described in the individual action plans, most signatories will follow this trend in the upcoming years and thereby moving the DISCO partnership forward towards its goals. Furthermore, most signatories underwrite the relevant national initiatives aiming to end cocoa-related deforestation and engage with in-country stakeholders (government, industry, civil society and research organizations) to ensure alignment to end deforestation with the local context.

DISCO signatories have the right plans and ambitions to meet their goals of taking effective measures to end child labour in their supply chains.

The goal of taking effective measures contributing to ending all forms of child labour in place by 2025 is halfway accomplished. The partnership has implemented Child Labor Monitoring and Remediation Systems (CLMRS) for more than half of its direct supply chain. CLMRS implementation varies greatly among signatories: some frontrunners have made substantial progress, covering a large portion of their supply chain, while others are more in the early stages of CLMRS rollout. However, based on the insights generated from the individual action plans, almost all signatories have the ambition to scale CLMRS to 100% coverage in the upcoming years. This indicates that the DISCO partnership is well on track with its goal around ending child labour.

Increasing accountability in the DISCO partnership

The publication of the Annual Report and individual action plans contribute to the accountability mechanism within the DISCO partnership. Each year, all signatories of DISCO report on the progress they are making towards the collective goals. In addition, signatories were requested to submit specific plans and set quantitative targets to contribute to the DISCO goals during the years 2024-2026. By publicly submitting these plans, the partnerships aim to 1) increase transparency on individual commitments and plans; 2) assess each other's performance towards achieving their stated goals; and 3) identify the key areas where there is a need to take joint efforts and support each other to move closer to achieving the DISCO goals.

Read here the full 2023 annual report

Find here below an overview of the action plans submitted by Signatories:

DISCO Subsector	Organization	Action Plan Status	Access to the document
Traders and Processors	Barry Callebaut	Submitted	Link
Cargill	Submitted	Link
ETG	Submitted	Link
Ofi	Not submitted yet
JS Cocoa	Submitted	Link
Brands and manufacturers	Friesland Campina	Submitted	Link
Mars	Submitted	Link
Mondelez	Submitted	Link
Nestlé	Submitted	Link
Tony's Chocolonely	Submitted	Link
Retail	Albert Heijn	Submission in the week of 21 October
Jumbo	Submission in the week of 21 October
Superunie	Submission in the week of 21 October
Government	Min. BuZa	Submitted	Link
Civil Society	Care	Submitted	Link
Fairfood	Submitted	Link
ICI	Submitted	Link
International Justice Mission	Submitted	Link
Oxfam	Submitted	Link
Save the Children	Submitted	Link
Solidaridad	Submitted	Link
Tropenbos	Submitted	Link
Unicef	Submitted	Link
Certification organizations	Fairtrade	Submitted	Link
Rainforest Alliance	Submitted	Link
Service providers & knowledge institutions	Agriterra	Submitted	Link
Agro Eco	Submitted	Link
Equipoise	Submitted	Link
KIT	Submitted	Link
Meridia	Submitted	Link
Port of Amsterdam	Submitted	Link
C. Steinweg	Submitted	Link

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