المنتدى العالمي المعني بالأمن الغذائي والتغذية

My comments on the study proposed are:

1.     The study proposed by the HLPE aiming at the actual and potential contribution of the forestry to the persistent and ubiquitous problem of food insecurity and malnutrition in developing countries can shed lights on the issue and bring a valuable source of information and insights for national decision makers.

2.     For start, the people already benefits directly from forests and trees for business and subsistence and indirectly by using their ecosystem services for agriculture, water supply or ecotourism, but the question one has to ask is the dynamics of forest development – especially tackling the problem of deforestation and forest and land degradation. In Brazil for instance, forests are continually degraded by the advances of agricultural frontier, especially in the Amazon, but also in the Central highland cerrado region. Logging business of course comes first slashing down trees, but other economic activities are responsible for permanently clear the forest for cultivation. In the Amazon, according to the World Bank study[1], it is the extensive cattle ranching the main responsible for forest degradation.

3.     Investment in infrastructure for development also causes deforestation as shown in the case of the pavement of the BR-163 road linking Cuiabá-Santarém for soybean export[2]. Affluence of migrants from everywhere clear forests for logging, for subsistence, for cattle ranching encouraged by the access to forest the paved road. Studies estimate that 50 km each side of the road are estimated to be cleared in short period of time.

4.     Therefore, causes vary and involve different kind of linkages between sectors that characterize the dynamics and the strategies of development of the forested region. Policies, economies and the people dependent of the forests and trees for their food security establish cooperative, conflictive, synergic or parasitic relationships peculiar to the region, but nevertheless, with invariants commons to many places. These invariants are the common features that deserve attention and need to be highlighted in the F&FSN study.

5.     Another point I like to stress is that forest is understood as basically resources to be exploited, depleted, and degraded in order to satisfy economic needs. Forests as ecosystems services provider – NWFPs, climate regulation, water production, nutrient cycling – is a notion largely neglected in rural development policies. In Brazil, this is treated as part of the biodiversity conservation policy, and in the last few years also part of the climate change policy. Industrial agriculture, mining and timber sectors would be interested in the conservation of forest only if they were rewarded with payments – carbon sequestration or other ecosystem services. In other words, there are political and economic disputes among stakeholders, which turn complex any sound forest management. 

6.     Added to the above issue of complex intersectoral relationships, rural communities dependent on the forest and tree services for their livelihood – indigenous peoples, all sorts of forest dwellers, “quilombolas”, fisherman – including food and other NWFPs, have to be included in this complex equation. Left to the market forces, these peoples are subject to further hardships, including food insecurity. They lose access to the forest, the source of income; they are expelled from their communities, in most case their incipient organizations are not heard in any institutional stances. In brief, they have no enough power to face the battle for forest resources and services. That is why policies make sense, but not any policy. A clear policy empowering forest and near forest communities to enhance access to forest and improve their livelihood, integrated to national development policy.

7.     The study should contain a clear analysis of invariants that move forested territories and the main drives of actual development in developing countries; understand the main causes either the forest degradation and food insecurity and malnutrition, in order to draw feasible recommendations.