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Tuesday, November 16th 2021

Jessica Meyer (UPEC & Chaire d'Economie du Climat) will present Do Forests Provide a Form of Insurance for Food Security and Nutrition in the Aftermath of a Weather Shock in Malawi?

Abstract:

This article looks at forests’ ability to mitigate detrimental impacts of a weather shock on several aspects of household food security and nutrition in Malawi. In addition, it investigates the safety net role of forests relative to other insurance mechanisms that could potentially be adopted by households during adversity. To do so we mobilize the World Bank's Living Standard Measurement Study-Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) for Malawi across several survey rounds, to which we overlay geospatial data on forest cover as well as a drought index based on both precipitation and temperature. Our preliminary results indicate that the occurrence of an adverse weather event has a negative and significant impact on all nutrition indicators, and that higher percentages of forest cover allow to offset the detrimental effects of a wet or dry spell on nutrition. Moreover, we find that forests play an important role in protecting nutrition especially for households who own a smaller number of assets and who partake in informal off-farm labor in times of need. Furthermore, communities who own livestock appear not to suffer from damages in terms of the quality and diversity of the food consumed, but rather in terms of food sufficiency. Nevertheless, in this case also, forests allow to mitigate such negative impacts.