FAO Forests for Food Report: Key Findings and Facts
Why in the news
A new FAO report, produced with the Landscape Alliance (CIFOR-ICRAF) under the Collaborative Partnership on Forests (CPF) Joint Initiative, examines how forests feed people.
About the report
- Title: Forests for Food: Nourishing People, Sustaining the Planet.
- Pulls together global evidence across the four food-security dimensions: availability, access, utilisation, stability.
- Addresses gaps from missing global definitions, unrecorded informal wild-food use and policy silos.
Key findings
| Theme | Finding |
|---|---|
| Livelihoods | 5 billion-plus people depend on forests; up to 20% of rural household income in some developing regions |
| Wild species | 50,000+ species used; 10,000+ eaten directly |
| Protein | Remote forest communities draw up to 80% of daily protein from wild foods |
| Woodfuel | 1.8 billion people (23% of world) mainly cooked with it in 2022; 410 million used it to purify water |
| Pollination | 35% of global crop output |
| Freshwater | Over 85% of major cities supplied by forested watersheds |
| Rainfall | 155 countries depend on foreign forests for up to 40% of rain |
| Medicine | 1 billion-plus use forest medicinal plants |
| Deforestation | 10.9 million ha a year, 2015-2025 |
Related terms
- FAO: based in Rome, set up in 1945.
- CIFOR-ICRAF: forestry research centre plus World Agroforestry.
- Arapaima: Amazon giant fish, 30-fold recovery with community management.
- VGGT: guidelines on responsible tenure governance.
- One Health: human, animal and environmental health together.
Exam angle
- Publisher: FAO with CIFOR-ICRAF.
- Programme: CPF Joint Initiative.