Introduction
One of the major global challenges for the next decades is to increase
food security while preserving natural habitats
(Godfray et
al., 2010; Latawiec et al., 2015). Historically, food
production comes via the expansion of agriculture over pristine natural
habitats (Alexanderet al., 2015), placing industrial food systems among the main
drivers of land-use change
(Foley et al.,
2011; IPBES, 2019). More food production, however, does not guarantee
access and conversion of natural habitats into agricultural fields has
limited impact on food security due to access limitations
(FAO, 2020). On the
other hand, natural habitats can play a major role on food security for
rural people as sources of plants, fisheries, wild meat and insects, for
example (Baudronet al., 2019). Access to forests can alleviate poverty by
allowing many kinds of traditional management practices such as
slash-and-burn agriculture, extensive pastoralism and diverse types of
extractivism (Jaggeret al., 2022). Understanding the relationships between food
security and forests is crucial to achieve biodiversity-friendly schemes
of food production such as: sustainable intensification of agricultural
production (Pretty &
Bharucha, 2014) and crop yield improvement
(Schütz et al.,
2018) that must reduce demand for new lands and therefore, halt
deforestation (Lambinet al., 2018). Fighting climate change while the population
grows demands conciliating food security and protection of forests
(Melo et al.,
2021). For this, we need a paradigm shift that places food security in
all its dimensions, including not only the access to the products of
agricultural fields but the access to forest goods and services.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations
(FAO, 2013), there
are four main dimensions of food security. First, availability ,
refers to the amount of food available in the system, considering, among
others, food production and population size
(Burchi & De Muro,
2016). Then, utilisation refers to how people cook, process and
store the food available in the system, but this dimension is also
related to water and sanitation issues, both affecting food utilisation
and health (Ericksen,
2008; FAO, 2020). A third aspect, stability, deals with the
capacity of the system to guarantee food supply in the face of several
types of disturbances, such as climate, market or political
instabilities (Kah,
2017; Tendall et al., 2015). Finally, access is the
capacity of people to access the food produced in the system, either
buying it or being capable of producing it themselves
(FAO, 2013; Klassen &
Murphy, 2020). The last is thought to be the main cause of food
insecurity because the amount of food needed to meet current basic world
population demands is actually produced
(Barrett, 2010).
Economic poverty precludes access to the food market while utilisation
of natural resources can alleviate food insecurity of rural poor
(Miller & Hajjar,
2020). Therefore, addressing food insecurity in a broad way demands
understanding the nature of the relationship between extent of natural
habitats and the several dimensions of food security.
Although the scientific literature highlights the tradeoff between the
establishment of new crop fields and the increasing deforestation
(Meyfroidt, 2018),
forest can help to improve food security
(Miller et al.,
2020; Rasmussen et al., 2020). Agroforestry systems, for
example, can contribute to improve availability, access and stability of
food systems at regional scales
(Rosenstock et
al., 2019). In many poor regions of tropical countries, forests are
used as grazing fields for extensive pastoralism practices while helping
to maintain forest cover
(Alencar et
al., 2022; Baudron et al., 2019). Despite this important
linkages between forests and food security have been recently recognised
(Bahar et al.,
2020), the forest-food nexus needs to be better explored
(Melo et al.,
2021). Important knowledge gaps on the role of natural habitats for
poverty alleviation and food security still persist and limit the
quantification of forests to food security. Because a diverse set of
natural and socioeconomic drivers can affect food security, we need to
test and re-create ways of measuring the determinants of access to food.
Human-made or “grey” infrastructure is surely required to improve food
security (Devereux,
2016). For example, roads help to guarantee access to markets and water
dams to irrigation schemes
(de Fraiture &
Wichelns, 2010; Khan et al., 2009). The same is true for the
“green” infrastructure (sensuSilva and Barbosa
2017) if we consider natural habitats as complementary sources of food
items. However, current development models usually replace “green” by
“grey” infrastructure and threaten landscapes of crossing a tipping
point that compromises the ability of natural habitats to provide the
services and goods that may improve food security
(Swift & Hannon,
2010). Little grey infrastructure is a signal of underdevelopment that
might reduce food availability due to limited access to food markets
(Khan et al.,
2009). On the other hand, little remaining natural habitats may
represent a lack of complementary source of food for people, thus also
reducing food security
(Vysochyna et
al., 2020). If it is true, it is reasonable to expect that a
combination of better social indicators and enough natural habitats must
provide better food security. At least theoretically, this is in
accordance with the concept of “optimal landscapes” that both
preserves natural habitats and produce food in a landscape structure
that allows the high levels of food production, ecosystem services and
biodiversity conservation
(Arroyo‐Rodríguezet al., 2020).
The Brazilian seasonally dry tropical forest, also known as Caatinga,
constitutes an opportunity for assessing the trade-offs and synergies
between food security and forests. This region is characterised by high
levels of social vulnerability
(Hummell et
al., 2016) and low food security when compared to the other regions of
Brazil (Gubertet al., 2017). Around 60% of its forest cover is preserved,
though severely degraded and fragmented
(Antongiovanniet al., 2018). People in this region depend largely on
small-scale agriculture and extensive pastoralism that are periodically
affected by seasonal droughts, thus reducing food availability
(Melo, 2017). Natural
resources are therefore an important asset for the 28 million people
living in this dry forest and are likely to provide both goods and
services that contribute to food security. The objective of this work is
to understand the nature of the relationship between food security and
forests at the regional scale. For this we focused on: 1) identifying
the main socioeconomic indicators of food insecurity in the Caatinga
through a multidimensional index of food security and; 2) understanding
the spatial configuration of food insecurity and deforestation. Our
results offer important evidence on the contribution of forests to food
security that should be useful to regional landscape management and
challenge the notion that current models of development based on
land-use change can alleviate poverty and food insecurity.
Materials and Methods