Over 5bn people rely on forests for livelihoods — FAO

More than five billion people worldwide rely on forests to some extent for their livelihoods, yet its contribution to food security and nutrition remains largely overlooked in national statistics and policy frameworks, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has said.

The FAO made this known in a new global report titled, ‘‘Forests for Food: Nourishing People, Sustaining the Planet’’, developed jointly with the Landscape Alliance and published on Tuesday.

The report highlighted the crucial role of forests and trees in providing nutritious food, reducing hunger and poverty, and called on countries to integrate forests into agrifood system policies.

FAO Director-General, QU Dongyu, in the report’s Foreword, said integrating forests into national, regional and global strategies would help build more efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable agrifood systems.

“By working together and fully integrating forests into national, regional and global strategies, we can build agrifood systems that are more efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable,” he said.

The report noted that about 645 million people experienced chronic hunger in 2025, while the world lost an average of 10.9 million hectares of forest annually over the last decade.

According to the report, deforestation and forest degradation reduce biodiversity, weaken ecosystem services and can ultimately undermine agricultural productivity and access to nutritious food.

It said forests support food security and nutrition through fruits, nuts, tubers, mushrooms, edible insects and wild meat, noting that more than 50,000 wild species are used for food, medicine and other purposes, including at least 10,000 consumed directly as food.