TY - JOUR

T1 - Even low levels of tree cover improve dietary quality in West Africa

AU - den Braber, Bowy

AU - Hall, Charlotte

AU - Brandt, Martin

AU - Reiner, Florian

AU - Mugabowindekwe, Maurice

AU - Rasmussen, Laura Vang

N1 - Funding Information: L.V.R., B.d.B., and C.H. were funded by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (grant agreement 853222 FORESTDIET). M.B., M.M., and F.R. were supported by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (grant agreement no. 947757 TOFDRY) and a DFF Sapere Aude grant (no. 9064–00049B). Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of National Academy of Sciences.

PY - 2024/2/1

Y1 - 2024/2/1

N2 - Forests are attracting attention as a promising avenue to provide nutritious and “free” food without damaging the environment. Yet, we lack knowledge on the extent to which this holds in areas with sparse tree cover, such as in West Africa. This is largely due to the fact that existing methods are poorly designed to quantify tree cover in drylands. In this study, we estimate how various levels of tree cover across West Africa affect children’s (aged 12–59 months) consumption of vitamin A–rich foods. We do so by combining detailed tree cover estimates based on PlanetScope imagery (3 m resolution) with Demographic Health Survey data from >15,000 households. We find that the probability of consuming vitamin A–rich foods increases from 0.45 to 0.53 with an increase in tree cover from the median value of 8.8 to 16.8% (which is the tree cover level at which the predicted probability of consuming vitamin A–rich foods is the highest). Moreover, we observe that the effects of tree cover vary across poverty levels and ecoregions. The poor are more likely than the non-poor to consume vitamin A–rich foods at low levels of tree cover in the lowland forest-savanna ecoregions, whereas the difference between poor and non-poor is less pronounced in the Sahel-Sudan. These results highlight the importance of trees and forests in sustainable food system transformation, even in areas with sparse tree cover.

AB - Forests are attracting attention as a promising avenue to provide nutritious and “free” food without damaging the environment. Yet, we lack knowledge on the extent to which this holds in areas with sparse tree cover, such as in West Africa. This is largely due to the fact that existing methods are poorly designed to quantify tree cover in drylands. In this study, we estimate how various levels of tree cover across West Africa affect children’s (aged 12–59 months) consumption of vitamin A–rich foods. We do so by combining detailed tree cover estimates based on PlanetScope imagery (3 m resolution) with Demographic Health Survey data from >15,000 households. We find that the probability of consuming vitamin A–rich foods increases from 0.45 to 0.53 with an increase in tree cover from the median value of 8.8 to 16.8% (which is the tree cover level at which the predicted probability of consuming vitamin A–rich foods is the highest). Moreover, we observe that the effects of tree cover vary across poverty levels and ecoregions. The poor are more likely than the non-poor to consume vitamin A–rich foods at low levels of tree cover in the lowland forest-savanna ecoregions, whereas the difference between poor and non-poor is less pronounced in the Sahel-Sudan. These results highlight the importance of trees and forests in sustainable food system transformation, even in areas with sparse tree cover.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85186261519&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae067

DO - 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae067

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 38404357

AN - SCOPUS:85186261519

VL - 3

JO - PNAS Nexus

JF - PNAS Nexus

SN - 2752-6542

IS - 2

M1 - pgae067

ER -