Dr Richard Asare is an Agroforester working with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) as the lead scientist on cocoa. He is the coordinator for the CocoaSoils Program and the CGIAR’s program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security that looks at mainstreaming climate smart agriculture in cocoa systems in Ghana. Richard has over 16 years of work experience in research and development and has developed a comprehensive framework that packages tree diversification options on cocoa farms in a way that improves, encourages and promotes local knowledge per environmental conditions, farmer tree species preferences, market demands, and improved planting material availability. His current work focuses on resilience of cocoa growing systems to impacts of climate change.