Managing expectations: implementing nutrition-sensitive fisheries and aquaculture

Abstract Blue (aquatic) foods’ current and potential role in improving whole-of-food system outcomes, across health, environment and livelihoods, is gaining recognition in research and policy. The concept of ‘nutrition-sensitive fisheries and aquaculture’ has been articulated to highlight this potential. In practice, many challenges remain in translating these high-level aspirations into implementable nutrition-sensitive actions within the aquatic foods sector. This study aimed to understand how food and nutrition can be embedded in fisheries and aquaculture management. Additionally, it investigates what supportive conditions are required outside these sectors to ensure success. A broad range of proposed approaches to support nutrition-sensitive fisheries and aquaculture were identified through a literature review and interviews with key informants in the Asia–Pacific region. These proposed approaches included maximising production to increase food supply, prioritising nutritional quality of products accessed through food environments, and increasing consumer demand. Barriers and opportunities to implementing these proposed approaches were also reviewed. They included the lack of incentive mechanisms to produce more nutritious but less profitable species; the impracticability of promoting increased consumption of aquatic food products where people have limited physical and financial access; and, for small-scale producers, trade-offs between consuming and selling nutritious food. Enabling mechanisms included the improved availability of information on nutrient content of aquatic species; theoretical advances in nutrition-related management and decision-making; and increasing alignment between fisheries and aquaculture sectoral policy and nutrition and food policies. The findings support use of a wider food systems approach, rather than an aquatic foods production focus, to enable coordination on multiple fronts to harness synergies and negotiate trade-offs between food security, resource conservation, and economic goals. This approach could generate greater impact through a range of potential levers that to date have been largely neglected.