Welcome back to the podcast, Brib, swindle, or steel. I'm Alexandra Raggi. We're talking today about the ESG,

environmental, social, and governance issues raised by a widely beloved indulgence chocolate, as it winds its way from crop to consumers.

My guest is Ital Igane,

a lawyer and activist on issues of human rights and the environment. Itel has worked with Human Rights

Watch, Amnesty International, UNICEF, Greenpeace, and Mighty Earth, and has recently joined the National

Wildlife Federation as a senior advisor. Itel focuses on ending deforestation and commodity agriculture and has led a major global

campaign to transform the world's cocoa industry to end deforestation and embrace agroforestry,

all while promoting traceability.

And she is, as a result, the ideal guest for today's topic.

Atel, thank you for joining me.

Oh, it's such a pleasure.

There's a lot to discuss here.

Why is chocolate problematic from an ESG perspective?

Can you give us the big picture overview?

Chocolate is really bad for both farmers and forests, for people and planet.

It's been driving deforestation around the world for quite some time, and also driving poverty with a whole host of ensuing problems, including

most notably child labor. But, you know, the fundamental way in which the industry has been structured

is not been around asking, how can we make this commodity a triple win for people, planet,

and profit. It's really just been about profit to the detriment of people and planets. I think that's

the big picture message that there's a deep problem at the heart of people and planets. I think that's the big picture message

that there's a deep problem at the heart of the chocolate industry in the soul of the industry.

That's a great jumping off point for what seems to be the hat trick of problems for an industry

...