Impact of Weather Shocks on Food Security: How Effective are Forests as Natural Insurance?

Malnutrition and food insecurity affect nearly one billion people worldwide. In developing countries, adverse weather shocks exacerbate these challenges by reducing agricultural productivity. Rural households often rely on forests for food. We determine whether forest access is associated with a less severe effect of adverse weather shocks on food security in rural Malawi. Exploiting exogenous variation in weather shocks and predetermined forest access, we find that households without forest access experience drops in food security when confronted with shocks, while forest access is associated with insignificant changes in food security. This suggests that forests are used as natural insurance. For the period considered by the study, we find that most of the negative impact of shocks was driven by floods, which were more prevalent and severe than droughts. In addition, we find evidence that the role of forests as natural insurance improves with increased forest density (canopy cover). There is a minimum forest density threshold below which forests are not associated with natural insurance. These results suggest that efforts to protect forests should consider their natural insurance role, particularly in regions with weak social safety nets.