Comments

All the very best for the rest of your studies Shirleyanne.

Thank you for an excellent and insightful piece, Sadhana . As Shamima Ali says “donors refuse to work with local experts even when Pacific expertise is available”. Instead, “people with poor understanding of the Pacific are brought from outside”. When will donors realize that ‘understanding of the Pacific’ IS vital expertise and that it is generally located among people from the Pacific, who often have other unrecognized expertise. It is long past the time when expensive consultants with little or no local knowledge of the Pacific should be sucking up the lion’s share of aid dollars. Listening to these voices will help Australia’s development program improve.

Thank you, Milindo! You are right: The Global Public Goods (GPG) is highly relevant! I discussed the GPG concept in my (open access) article in Third World Quarterly: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01436597.2017.1333887

Thanks for the interesting article initiating this discussion. It seems important not to forget that at this time Australia and NZ are higher risk than the PICs for Covid 19 and yet the article does not address how returning workers will be quarantined or at whose expense?

Hi sir, such a great post, I love to gather knowledge of the economic and the different strategy that have applied ever. in your post "transitional dual exchange rate system" it seems very interesting. I totally agree with you that in the past most of the countries have use this method to be a success. thanks for such a sharing.

Hello, Thanks for sharing your own personal experience with us Jonathon, i am Manal 26 years old, Egyptian development sector employee , I started my career in development when I was 18 years old as a volunteer " social worker head " in a local NGOs at some slums in poor neighborhoods in Egypt then I started to share my experience with other development organizations working at the same field as a social working trainer voluntarily , year next I employed as a social worker also at UNHCR (The UN refugee agency) at Cairo Office , at this period I found my passion I started some self study online courses to get more knowledge about refugees from different nationalities and their languages and dialect , their traditions I used to listen to them carefully and feel their suffering now I've been working with 25 different nationality with 80 $ per month , but I am so satisfied with offering caring and love , by offering acceptance and safe to whom in need. Thank you for your great work in humanitarian.

Good one, Stephan and Artemy. The need of the century. Needs more effective and collective efforts to institutionalize GPGs.

Transform is spot-on in promoting the use of new technologies to remotely monitor fishing operations and provide a link between sustainable fisheries, conservation of tuna stocks and threatened species, observer safety and the economies of Pacific island countries. The WCPO tuna fishery is the world's most valuable, and it's time that distant water nations modernised their fleet and included automated monitoring equipment on all their vessels.

Congratulations on your perseverance Shirleyanne and good luck for the future!

I could not agree more with the 5 highlights and also with the need to have them highlighted. I would suggest there is a 6th need that is embedded within the 5 and that is to help the partner states promote their own strong executive leadership, and management that will demand the use of MERL to their own advantage. This is so much easier stated than practiced as (i) too often MERL tends to be owned, created and driven by development agencies to meet their own mandated organizational needs (as you state this is more for evaluation than adaptive management). This promotes a complexity and sophistication desired by development agencies that may look good but waves goodbye to any local engagement, and (ii) firm executive leadership can be so fiercely challenged and constrained by local social and political demands in partner states, most especially in the closely-knit Pacific Island Countries.

The Pacer agreement is a good starting point. A Pacific community sounds like a great idea. One of the problems that will inevitably arise is, who will be the representatives of such an august body? Will representatives be the best (informed) persons or simply those with connections seeking a well-paid position in another toothless bureaucracy? The alternative model of finance as a panacea is also fraught with the issues surrounding corruption and misappropriation of funds. A pacific community should have elected representatives with limited tenure. A charter for education and health services across the pacific would be an imperative, as would a news network to keep the populace-at-large informed about the proposals and achievements of a pacific community. And finally, long term strategies for the pacific community would need to deal with global warming, maintenance of cultural identities, and policing project agreements.

Came across this article whilst reading around PNG Government’s refusal to renew Barrick’s operation on the Pogera Mine last week. What lessons should we draw from nationalization of OK Tedi? Did revenues increase after nationalization? How much it contribute to PNG during the years after the boom? - if the net revenues (when it paid taxes as part of BHP and when it was nationalized) are bigger, it may explain why government wants to nationalize one more. Was the management and senior positions politicized? Has it affected investors confidence? Or is the second nationalization of a mining company now going to make investors nervous? It’s an interesting article.