This report, at the request of NRSP, highlights “research learning and new thinking” arising from R8100. It considers the project’s process from a strategic viewpoint, which is summarised in a conceptual matrix.

The main features of the process’s overall strategy considered in more detail are:

• Strategy for bringing through the voices of poor people – described as facilitated advocacy, with the role played by the project being one of “making it easier for people to speak for themselves”. Essentially, this was an attempt to overcome one of the larger ‘discourse gaps’, that between poor farmers and fishers and policymakers.
• Alignment between government policy and identified policy recommendations – building on existing policy development processes, the recommended change priorities identified by the NRSP project are related to those of the Vision Statement of the Animal Husbandry and Dairying Department.
• Positioning of policy recommendations – to promote pro-poor policy lessons, grouping these into elementary categories of livelihoods support relating to policy development, communications and institutions.
• Selection and use of case studies – as a rich source of knowledge and learning.
• Origin of the recommendation to encourage aquaculture self-help groups – which arose within each of the stakeholder groups.

The roles and capacities required in the policy review process – and those implied generically for others engaging in such a process – are tabulated.

This report concludes with a note about ‘voicelessness’ and transactional costs. The project represents one approach to counter lack of voice, an alliance of (self) assertion and solidarity with ‘outside’ advocates, not representing others but supporting them to represent themselves.

In these ways, a distillation of the “research learning and new thinking” from the project is presented in order to increase the potential usability of the research ‘products’ more widely. Reports of the above project elements are widely referenced and it is recommended that this document be read in conjunction with the other project reports, all of which are distributed as a boxed set and associated CD.