3 November 2004 - Forests provide emergency income, food and medicine for rural households affected by HIV/AIDS. The cruel progression of HIV, ensuing social and economic disruption, excessive healthcare expenses and the eventual loss of family breadwinners can devastate household livelihoods. In such circumstances forests help make ends meet.

According to a recent study commissioned by the FAO in five communities in Malawi and Mozambique, households experiencing the death of a working-age adult were more likely to earn income by selling fuelwood. Fuelwood can be collected by children and women with minimal and unspecialized labor. Affected households were five times more likely to have increased fuelwood collection than non-affected households in the last 5 years. Fuelwood provides them with a year round opportunity to generate cash because the markets for fuelwood are robust throughout the year. Households sometimes also collect wild foods and make reed mats and baskets to earn additional income.

Further to income, forests provide affected households with critical medicinal plants. Herbs found in forests have been observed as effective in managing HIV/AIDS-related infections such as oral thrush, herpes and shingles, and in relieving appetite loss, nausea, fever, diarrhea, and cough. While the region desperately awaits expanded coverage of biomedical healthcare, including antiretroviral therapy (ART), herbal remedies remain an important option for the management of HIV/AIDS symptoms and related illnesses that proliferate in absence of antiretroviral therapy.

The study found that forest resources, including medicinal plants, depleted a lot faster where there was a high level of HIV prevalence. And where forests are mismanaged, these coping strategies against HIV/AIDS, are threatened. Scarcity of forest resources for subsistence can even create situations of vulnerability. Interviews revealed that where fuelwood is scarce, transactional sex is common and a vicious cycle unfolds. The study therefore indicates that the sustainable management of forest resources is in itself important in mitigating the effects of HIV/AIDS.

Where forests provide a safety net for rural households coping with the short and long-term impacts of HIV/AIDS, inadequate forest management is threatening the viability of these coping strategies. Among two study communities having similar access to forest resources, indicators of forest quality revealed that, in the community with a high level of HIV prevalence, forest resources were being depleted at a faster rate than the community with low HIV prevalence.

"This is not to say that there is a causal relationship between HIV prevalence and deforestation but this research does indicate that, for households in those rural communities most affected by HIV/AIDS, their ability to cope is being undermined by the unsustainability of forest resources," said Christine Holding-Anyonge, an FAO forestry expert.

In addition to the health consequences at the household level, scarcity of subsistence forest-based needs can create situations of vulnerability that perpetuate the epidemic in rural areas. Interviews revealed that where firewood is scarce, transactional sex is common.