Ecosystem services are essential for directly and indirectly assuring the food security and nutritional diversity of rural communities, with major implications for the poorest and most vulnerable households. In this new line of investigation, ecosystem services will be analyzed through the lens of four main dimensions (or pillars) that should be simultaneously present in order to be food secure: availability, access, utilization and stability.

A team of researchers left to the depths of the Colombian Amazon, as part of the first phase of fieldwork for the project ‘Managing ecosystem services for food security and the nutritional health of the rural poor at the forest-agricultural interface”. The fieldwork consists of the use of various participatory methods with different indigenous communities that depend directly and indirectly on the forest to survive.

Guest post by Dr. Helena Pachón, CIAT Nutritionist and Director of AgroSalud How do you pinpoint where the most nutritionally vulnerable are located?  Answering this question poses an important challenge for nutrition professionals as most nutrition information is gathered at the national or state level, not at the local level.  At CIAT, we collaborated with
[continue reading...]