The role of forests for food security
Although our results do not address the role of forest to food security directly, there are some indirect connections that can be made based on the established literature. Forest goods and services are considered an important source of poverty alleviation as they provide vegetables, bushmeat, and work as rangelands for husbandry and provide nutrient cycling needed for shifting agriculture (Baudron et al., 2019). Our index of food security could not grasp such services because this kind of data is hardly available on the scale of our analyses. However, the fact that the highest values of food security were registered in intermediate levels of forest cover suggest that a combination of basic “grey” and enough “green” infrastructure offer more opportunities for poverty alleviation and increase access to natural goods and services that ultimately reduce food insecurity. Our results indicate that improving socioeconomic conditions (i.e. reducing poverty and inequality) can be more effective to increase food security than stimulating food production through agricultural land expansion. Positive associations between forest cover and several nutrition indicators have been reported elsewhere in the literature (Ickowitz et al., 2014; Johnson et al., 2013; Powell et al., 2011) whereas a significant inverted-U relationship between tree cover and fruit and vegetable consumption was registered in a study that compiled data from 21 African countries (Ickowitz et al., 2014). Forests can play an important role as a safety net for low-income people, particularly by providing family income complement (Miller & Hajjar, 2020). In rural Malawi, for example, forests play an important role for poor rural farmers while coping with food shortages during climate shocks, either by providing a direct source of food or through the selling of forest goods (Fisher et al., 2010).