Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Food Policy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/foodpol Assessing household food insecurity experience in the context of deforestation in Cameroon Precillia I. Tata Ngome a, ⁎ , Charlie Shackleton b , Ann Degrande c , Eric Joel Nossi a , Francis Ngome a a National Institute of Agricultural Research Development (IRAD), Cameroon b Department of Environmental Science, Rhodes University, South Africa c World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), Yaounde, Cameroon ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Cameroon Congo basin Deforestation Food insecurity Forest areas Scale score Prevalence ABSTRACT Background: In forest areas, reconciling strategies to halt deforestation and concerns to improve sustainable food supply and access is a great challenge to development planners and forest managers. This paper gathered evi- dence on the relationship between deforestation and food insecurity. The study was executed in Cameroon’s forest areas which constitute 10% of the Congo basin forest - an area characterized by increasing deforestation and high levels of poverty and food insecurity (FIS). The objective was to understand the characteristics, pre- valence and severity of household FIS as deforestation increases. The HFIAS 9-item questionnaire for measuring experience-based FIS was used for data collection and analysis. Results: At least one-third of households at all levels of deforestation were severely food insecure and more than half of the population suffered from moderate to severe FIS. Most (97%) households reported experiencing food scarcity due to lack of resources. Households in the least deforested zone were better off than those in moderate and most deforested zones by most of the FIS indicators, while differences between the moderately and the most deforested zones were less distinct. Overall, considering a range of food insecurity indicators, households in the most deforested zone were the worst off. Conclusion: Household FIS deteriorates with increasing deforestation and despite the generally favourable en- vironmental conditions for food production, FIS was still high. This finding has major implications for devel- opment practitioners, land use planning, food security and conservation initiatives. 1. Introduction Malnutrition is an enormous burden in the world affecting two billion people and represented by the silent crisis faced by most rural communities in Cameroon (Johnston et al., 2014; Deitchler et al., 2011; Kamgaing and Fotio, 2011; Socpa et al., 2008). Forest adjacent people are among the most food insecure groups in Cameroon wherein households are characterized by inconsistent food supply and sporadic food shortages (Kamgaing and Fotio, 2011; Socpa et al., 2008). In forest areas, reconciling strategies to halt deforestation and concerns to im- prove sustainable food supply and access by forest adjacent populations is a great challenge to development planners and forest managers. Moreover, measuring food security in developing countries is still ad hoc and does not take into account social factors like peoples’ tastes, preferences, and number of meals eaten (McGarry and Shackleton, 2009; Socpa et al., 2008). As such, operational agencies lack a basis for differentiating households on varying degrees of food insecurity (FIS) to target and evaluate their interventions (Barrett, 2010; Webb et al., 2006). Therefore, it is time we bring appropriate understanding and new strategies on unpacking the nexus between nutritional security and deforestation. With respect to contextual framings, it is well known that moist and dry forests provide a range of ecosystem services, including foods, to rural people (Tata Ngome et al., 2017, Nasi et al., 2011; Delang, 2006). However, it is only recently that quantitative relationships have been explored between forest exploitation and household food and nutri- tional security. For example, Powell et al. (2011) showed that rural households in Tanzania with tree patches or forests close to their homes had a higher dietary diversity and more nutrient dense foods than households at greater distances to areas with trees. This was explained at a larger scale by Ickowitz et al. (2014) for 21 countries in Africa. Using national-scale data on forest cover and dietary indices, they concluded that there was a strong positive relationship between tree cover and dietary diversity, as well as with fruit and vegetable https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2019.02.003 Received 5 June 2016; Received in revised form 1 July 2018; Accepted 20 February 2019 ⁎ Corresponding author at: IRAD, NKolbisson, Yaoundé, Cameroon. E-mail address: ijang2001@yahoo.fr (P.I. Tata Ngome). Food Policy xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx 0306-9192/ © 2019 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Please cite this article as: Precillia I. Tata Ngome, et al., Food Policy, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2019.02.003