What decision-making methods are most suitable, and in which context?
Documents setting out clearly the logic of planning are scarce, even in the wider context of agricultural development. Publications on planning methods, however, are available but they provide little insight into the rational process involved in the planning of the development of a sector like aquaculture. It may be easier to visualise the rational planning process in the form of an inversed pyramid (Figure 2). The policy framework spells out the broad directions of development a country wishes to follow, for a given sector (aquaculture for example). Each direction of development contains one or more aims, or necessary requirements for a country to develop its aquaculture sector. By their very nature, these requirements are qualitative and broad in scope. Defining a framework of development is thus the first step of the planning process. Designing a strategy comes second, as a strategy takes each requirement of the framework further by envisaging how each could be met. The concretizati
