Chocolate industry drives rainforest disaster in Ivory Coast

Exclusive: As global demand for chocolate booms, 'dirty' beans from deforested national parks have entered big business supply chains

• 'Once this was all trees, but they burned them to plant cocoa': the ruin of West Africa's rainforest

The world's chocolate industry is driving deforestation on a devastating scale in West Africa, the Guardian can reveal.

Cocoa traders who sell to Mars, Nestli(C), Mondelez and other big brands buy beans grown illegally inside protected areas in the Ivory Coast, where rainforest cover has been reduced by more than 80% since 1960.