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The Role of Forests, Trees and Wild Biodiversity for Nutrition-Sensitive Food Systems and Landscapes

Year of publication 2013

Pages 25 p.

Author Powell, B.;Ickowitz, A.;McMullin, S.;Jamnadass R.;Padoch, C. ;Pinedo-Vasquez, M.;Sunderland, T.;Nutrition Division

Product type Document

Edition 1

Synopsis (short abstract) Many contend that in order to overcome the world’s nutrition problems, nutrition must become a crosscutting issue, with concrete commitment and attention from a wide range of disciplines. From this assertion has grown the promotion of nutrition-sensitive approaches to economic growth, development, agriculture and food systems (nutrition-specific interventions target malnutrition directly, whereas nutrition-sensitive interventions target the causes of malnutrition by integrating nutrition into po licies and programs in diverse sectors). There have been repeated calls for the international community to prioritize identification ways to leverage agriculture (and agricultural landscapes) to enhance nutrition (and health). Land use change is an often overlooked driver of change in diets, nutrition and food security, especially for rural communities. The synergies between food systems approaches to food security and nutrition and landscape approaches to integrated biodiversity and forest cons ervation should be explored and built on. Forests and trees support food security and nutrition in a number of ways. Forests and wild biodiversity provide nutritionally important foods (including fruits, vegetables, bush meat, fish and insects), that contribute to the diversity and nutritional quality of diets of people living in heterogeneous landscapes. Forests and trees provide fuelwood, an essential and often overlooked component of the food systems in rural areas across the globe. Forests a nd tree products make invaluable contributions to the income of people living in and around them, often providing the only means of accessing the cash economy, thus enabling access to nutritious foods through purchasing. Forests also sustain resilience: forest products are often consumed more frequently in times of food scarcity and can provide livelihood safety nets. When they reach markets, forest and tree products can contribute to the nutrition-sensitivity of global food systems (approximate ly 53% of the fruit available for consumption globally is produced by trees), especially when market chains are supported and developed in a nutrition-sensitive manner. Biodiversity, forests and trees outside forests also provide an array of ecosystem services essential for the sustainability and nutriton-senstivity of agricultural systems (e.g. pollination, water provisioning, genetic resources). A better understanding of the importance of these relationships, and the spatial scales at which th ey function, is needed to ensure they are not overlooked in policy and practice.

Meeting Session Number 2nd.

Language English

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