Hostname: page-component-74656f9884-c52kr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-07T07:46:53.587Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Ecosystem services and food security: assessing inequality at community, household and individual scales

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2016

CHRISTOPHER D. GOLDEN*
Affiliation:
Department of Environmental Health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA USA Harvard University Center for the Environment, Cambridge, MA USA
A. CLARE GUPTA
Affiliation:
Department of Human Ecology, University of California, Davis, CA USA
BAPU VAITLA
Affiliation:
Department of Environmental Health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA USA
SAMUEL S. MYERS
Affiliation:
Department of Environmental Health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA USA Harvard University Center for the Environment, Cambridge, MA USA
*
*Correspondence: Christopher D. Golden e-mail: golden@hsph.harvard.edu
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Summary

Wildlife populations provide harvestable meat to people and contribute to local food security. Throughout the year, and particularly at times of agricultural food shortages, wildlife and other wild foods play a critical role in supporting food security and enhancing local human nutrition. We explored the distribution of food security benefits of agricultural food production and a particular ecosystem provisioning service – wildlife harvest in the Makira Natural Park (MNP) of Madagascar – at community, household and individual levels. We found strong variation in wildlife consumption both among communities and among households and less variation among individuals within households. Mean household wildlife consumption in the target community was 10 kg per year ranging by approximately two orders of magnitude, with poorer and more food insecure households more reliant on wildlife for food. Meats (including wildlife) appeared to be evenly distributed within households, unaffected by age, sex, birth order and body weight, while other foods (including stew, rice and other staples) appeared to be allocated based on body mass. Reductions in wildlife consumption cause increased risk of food insecurity and specific nutritional deficiencies. The findings from our multilevel study suggest that disaggregated analysis that merges ecosystem services theory and the microeconomics of resource allocation allows for a more accurate valuation approach.

Information

Type
Papers
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation for Environmental Conservation 2016 
Figure 0

Figure 1 Conceptual framework of the availability of food security related-ecosystem services and factors determining observed variation in access at different levels. Statistics icon from Scarce2 (2008).

Figure 1

Table 1 Variable definitions used in multilevel multivariable analysis.

Figure 2

Figure 2 Wild meat consumed per household per year (kg) by household typology. hh = Household.

Figure 3

Figure 3 Diet composition biomass of animal-source foods in 28 households in northeastern Madagascar. Wildlife comprises a larger portion of poorer households’ diet (42%; n = 14) than of richer households’ diet (27%; n = 14). This variation in wildlife dependency means that wildlife is of greater health and economic value to poorer households than to richer households.

Figure 4

Table 2 Results of multivariable analyses of the individual- and household-level determinants of meat, stew and rice consumption. Standard errors in parentheses. Household size is the number of individuals present at a meal, income is a continuous variable that is logged due to its positive skew, and food security is a ranked variable according to quantity and quality of sufficient food (see Table 1). *p < 0.1; **p < 0.05; ***p < 0.01; ****p < 0.001.