Who Gets to Eat Wild Fish and Meat? A Socially-Disaggregated Analysis of Wild Animal Consumption Across Diverse Rural Environments in Five Countries of the Global South

Abstract

Consumption of wild fish and meat (WFM) connects the challenges of food security (SDG 2) and conservation of life on land (SDG 15) and water (SDG 14). An understanding of the social distribution of the benefits of WFM consumption is imperative in order to design conservation policies that are just and sustainable. We used mixed effects logistic regression to model how settlement-level (urban connectivity, proportion of of uncultivated area) and individual-level (household income, livelihood activity, consumption of alternatives) factors affected the probability of recent consumption of wild meat and fish as well as domestic meat in ~ 2000 households across 40 settlements in Colombia, Peru, Malawi, Mozambique and Kenya. We also quantified the prevalence and source (harvested, produced, purchased or gifted) of WFM and domestic meat consumption at the study sites. Fish was more widely consumed than wild meat, but wild meat was more informally accessed (through harvest or gifting) as compared to fish (mostly purchased) at most sites. Wild meat, fish and domestic meat were all observed to be normal goods, i.e. their probability of consumption increased with income. Consumption of wild and domestic meats became more egalitarian with decreasing connectivity to urban centres and increasing proportion of unultivated area in the landscape. We found evidence for nutrition transition, wherein consumption of WFM decreased and that of domestic meat increased with increasing connectivity to urban centres. However, relatively higher income households were less likely to give up consumption of wild meat and much more likely to adopt consumption of domestic meat with increasing urban connectivity as compared to poorer households. Households that consumed WFM also tended to consume domestic meat, suggesting overlapping preferences. Hunting and fishing households were more likely to have consumed wild meat and fish respectively. Critically, our results point to social inequities in consumption of WFM and domestic meat alternatives along the dimensions of rurality, income and livelihoods. These distributional aspects need to be taken into account when considering interventions for food security and halting overexploitation.