Our work

The FAO Forestry for Food Security and Nutrition Programme, in harmony with the One Health concept, supports global and regional communities and national governments in focusing on the long-term potential of forests to sustainably provide food security, nutrition and human health benefits, rather than on short-term economic considerations.

The vision is to improve the food security, nutrition and health of people worldwide by unlocking the full potential of forests.

Goals

• Foster understanding of the vital contribution of forests to food security, nutrition and human health, and the need for sustainable forest management to integrate these issues. 
• Support countries in cross-sectoral development of policies that include explicit objectives for sustainable forestry, food security, nutrition and human health. 
• Ensure that forest management policies and practices of relevance to food security, nutrition and human health are based on valid evidence and data.
  

Partnership

Programmes addressing food security

Policy and technical support to countries and projects

• Developing and sharing guidelines and best practices to integrate food security, nutrition and human health into sustainable forest management policy and practices.
• Developing a cross-sectoral forestry and food security policy assessment framework and related field-testing at the national level through which programmes and projects are formulated and implemented.
• Providing technical support to country programmes and projects that aim to improve food security, nutrition and human health through better management of forest resources.
• Supporting Member countries, the private sector and civil society by guiding international policy processes that promote the integration of food security, nutrition and human health objectives into sustainable forest management goals, and vice versa.

Knowledge management

• Reducing knowledge gaps on the links between forests, food security, nutrition and human health.
• Collecting, monitoring and analyzing data on:
  • The contribution of forests to food security and nutrition (to build on existing information).
  • The links between forests and human health (a newer avenue of research).
• Disseminating analyzed data to governmental and non-governmental stakeholders at the global, regional and national levels to support evidence-based policy processes and initiatives on forests as they relate to food security, nutrition and human health.

Capacity development

• Conducting workshops and training to raise understanding about the links between forests, food security, nutrition and human health, and the steps that can be taken at the global, regional and national levels to strengthen those links.
• Developing training manuals to support the capacity development activities of governmental and non-governmental stakeholders.

Advocacy 

• Promoting the role of forests in sustainable food security, nutrition and human health through coordination of events with a cross-sectoral network of governmental and intergovernmental agencies, private sector entities, civil society organizations and research institutions.
• Engaging in international policy processes and dialogues to increase recognition of the links between forests, food security, nutrition and human health and to advocate for policies and institutions that integrate these linkages into sustainable forest management.