The Ivory Coast is clearing tens of thousands of cocoa farmers from protected forests, threatening exports from the world's top grower and leading to complaints about human rights abuses.
Cocoa represents about 10 percent of the former French colony's economic output but the environmental costs of the industry's growth have been high.
The European Union estimates three-quarters of the West African country's forests have disappeared in the past five decades, mainly due to farming including cocoa plantations.
President Alassane Ouattara's government says it is prepared to pay the economic price of phasing agriculture out to save the dwindling tropical forest and the security services have started flattening houses and forcefully removing the farmers.
Ouattara has won praise and promises of billions of dollars in funding from world powers for rebuilding Ivory Coast after a brief war that followed his 2010 election win.
The forestry service says around half the 4.2 million hectares of protected forest reserves are illegally occupied and the evictions form part of his efforts to reassert state authority after a decade of stagnation and political turmoil.
It also tallies with his plan to diversify the economy away from cocoa, which accounts for 40 percent of exports.
There also appears to be pressure on Ivory Coast to clear up its forestry sector as it starts negotiations with the European Union over a new timber trade agreement although illegal logging operates on a much smaller scale than cocoa farming.
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