ABSTRACT
Fisheries development projects have been assessed primarily on the basis of their capacity to generate revenues, whether the focus is on profits to owners, contributions to the gross national product, or foreign exchange earnings. Nutritional considerations should also be treated as a significant factor in the fisheries project evaluation. Increasing production, reducing waste, increasing efficiency, supporting small-scale operations, increasing employment, and improving technology are all familiar objectives of the fisheries development. If the consumers of the products of a fisheries operation are very poor people, rather than people who are well off, it would be reasonable to infer that that operation is helping to alleviate malnutrition. International agencies with responsibilities for the evaluation of fisheries development projects could take the lead in formulating and using sophisticated evaluation models which take the alleviation of malnutrition—along with other important values—fully into account.
