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All development projects attempt to improve the well-being of people living in project areas. Development goals often involve narrowing the disparity between the rich and the poor by focusing especially on improving the situation of those in the poorer strata. Increasingly, criteria other than economic improvement are being used to further these goals.
Nutritional well-being is one of the non-economic criteria that is being used to assess quality of life. Isolated development projects cannot by themselves eliminate the underlying causes of malnutrition that are deeply rooted in political, social and economic inequalities. Yet development projects, and specifically forestry projects can use nutritional well-being as a measure of project success and can use nutritional vulnerability to identify potential project beneficiary groups. Incorporating nutrition concerns into forestry activities is possible once the relationship between forestry and nutrition is understood. With the help of the community, nutritionists, social scientists and foresters can determine the nutrition situation in the project area in order to focus activities on enhancing the nutritional well-being of individuals. With surprisingly little effort most forestry projects can incorporate measures aimed at improving nutritional well-being.