Food insecurity is endemic in Malawi, affecting up to 38% of the population every year in the run-up to the harvest in April.

Global food, fuel, and fertilizer prices have risen rapidly in recent months, driven in large part by the fallout from the ongoing war in Ukraine and the sanctions imposed on Russia.

Although geographically distant, there are multiple channels through which Russia’s invasion of Ukraine can affect the lives of Malawians.

Diversification is a common livelihood strategy for rural households in developing countries, with diversification being either a choice or necessity depending on individual household contexts.

Following poor harvests in the 2015/16 cropping season in Malawi, vulnerability assessments found that nearly 6.7 million people, primarily in the Southern and Central regions, were likely to suffer from food insecurity before the next harvest.

Considering the continuous influx of Mozambican refugees to Malawi as an external shock to the forest ecosystem, a dynamic model of optimizing the use of forest tree resources is developed in this paper.