Keimgasse High School to visit IIASA

• Where does 70% of the cocoa come from? (From Ghana and Ivory Coast)
• On the other hand where are most of the chocolate factories located? (In Europe, North America and China, which means a transportation of around 5000 tonnes of beans per year)
• Is the livelihood spread equally? (Of course not, around 50 million people around the world rely on cocoa for their livelihoods, however the farmers only receive around 6% of a chocolate bar's retail price)
• Is cocoa production good for the local economy and environment? (Not really, Ivory Coast has lost around 90% of all its forests, 37.4% (360,000 hectares) of this is linked to chocolate)
• Is chocolate affected by climate change (How not! About one third of the land has deteriorated and cannot be used for plantations any more, with rising extent of droughts and the appearance of new pests)
• Is there anything shocking? (Yes, a shocking 1.56 million children were in child labour in the cocoa sector in West Africa in 2019)

The students are encouraged to capture the complexity of the natural and social world they live in, connect the causes and consequences - which is one of the key objectives of the IIASA School Visits Initiative. The interactive half-day workshops engage the students to develop their own set of solutions to improve the broader environmental and social implications of their choices and actions. IIASA researchers help the class to move beyond "guilt" toward problem-solving and expecting decision-makers to create fair and green systems.