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From Garth Luke on Coal, poverty and energy access
In 2014 the Center for Global Development in Washington <a href="http://www.cgdev.org/blog/energy-access-vs-renewables-tradeoff-our-reply-kammen-and-oxfam" rel="nofollow">estimated</a> that government incentives to the private sector could provide access to electricity for three times as many people with fossil fuels than with renewables.
However the most important factor in their calculations was not the differences in costs of the energy sources, but the historically higher leveraging that had been achieved with fossil fuel plants (5:1 cf 1.5:1).
We know that increased fossil fuel energy production is bad, and could be catastrophic, for all of us. We know that most developing countries have good solar and wind resources. We know that changes to financing incentives can make renewable energy costs competitive with fossil fuel costs.
While coal has been useful in the past, the main reason we are still considering coal and other fossil fuels for the production of new electricity is the established interests of fossil fuel producing companies and countries.
From Paul Oates on Politicising drought relief in Papua New Guinea
Hi Thiago, I am tad intrigued about your contention that: 'within PNG critics of greedy MPs and dodgy DSIP funding often do not call for the abolition of the scheme, but rather that it should be ‘fairer’.
That is rather inconsistent with the feedback I hear from the kunai roots.
Perhaps you could elucidate more on the basis of your statistical analysis?
Olsem mino klia tumas lo as tru blo tingting blo yu lo displa samting. (I'm not really sure about what your perspective is based upon? Is this statement based on facts or opinion?)
From Thiago Cintra Oppermann on Politicising drought relief in Papua New Guinea
Hi Tess,
I think there are several reasons why DSIPs are more politicised than national and provincial budgets. A preliminary comment here is that by 'politicised' I mean 'captured by the individual MP's political machine'. (We're not talking about DSIP funding being coopted into an ideology.)
The first point would be that while National and Provincial bureaucracies are vulnerable to pressure from politicians, DDAs are convened by politicians. They are explicitly designed to increase the power of the local MP over the direction of government funding. For all their problems, national and provincial bureaucracies are at least notionally separate from the will of individual MPs, whereas DDAs are designed to provide a vehicle for their political agenda.
Second, the levels of expertise and capacity of National and Provincial bureaucracies, although far from ideal, are much greater than those found in district administrations. This makes them more resilient to political pressure. The practicalities of keeping all the districts accountable are also daunting: they are already very difficult with the Provinces, and those administrative tasks are now being multiplied by an order of magnitude, while supervision and training are not.
Third, although one might think that district administrations, being closer to the grass roots, are under a 'democratic supervision', in fact politicians hold all the cards in appointing DDA members and securing funding. DDA meetings often take place outside of the district, are not announced, and their minutes, which are theoretically public documents, are held in secret.
It is possible that politicians will end up being thrown out of office for poor handing of DDAs; distributivist politics brew a lot of resentment, and perhaps, for some MPs, K20 million funding and DDAs will be a case of the curse of getting what you wanted. Yet the development of constituency funding is one of the most interesting stories in PNG political economy: it has ratcheted up since the early 1980s, and under O'Neil it has bloomed into a major, perhaps even primary, aspect of the government. This has happened against the advice of outside parties, such as the IMF, WB and donors. Even PNG politicians sympathetic to these critics have presided over expansions, or efforts to disguise, the distributivist system. The social forces promoting this kind of political organisation are in fact ubiquitous at every level, from the cabinet to 'ol as peles' (villagers). Note the surprising fact that Provincial members, who stand to lose power relative to Open MPs in the transition to DDAs, voted for the scheme. Note also, that within PNG critics of greedy MPs and dodgy DSIP funding often do not call for the abolition of the scheme, but rather that it should be 'fairer': there are moral criticism of 'bad MPs', but it is hard for people to envision a politics that broke at a fundamental level with the concept that politicians should personally 'kisim ol gutpela sevis i kam long peles', 'bring good services to the village'. I believe this would require deep social changes.
From Bal Kama on PNG in 2016: the year of finding solutions?
Thank you Levi. While parts of the article tries to be optimistic, early signs suggest the need for extreme caution on the part of the government in 2016. Will be an interesting year.
From Paul Oates on Politicising drought relief in Papua New Guinea
Let's just call it as it is: Provided the local members keep supporting the PM and his government, the DSIP funds keep coming. They have become the slush money local members can use as they wish.
The DSIP program has a duel purpose of ensuring those who support the government are financially rewarded and providing a re-election fund for these members.
Feedback from the kunai roots is that at each level of the DSIP financial food chain everyone involved takes a large cut out of any funds that trickle down. By the time any of these funds actually reach the local level, ineffective management and malfeasance disposes of the residue before anything positive is achieved.
Why would anyone really be surprised since the system has been intentionally set up by those in power and thus presented as an example of how things in PNG should be run.
Why has this been allowed to happen? This article explains that those who are marginalized by the political process don't have any say at all.
So let's call a spade a spade. This is not democracy. This is autocracy leading to dictatorship.
By providing over half a billion dollars a year of aid to PNG, the Australian government it seems apparently happy to both formally recognizing and aiding the formation of an autocratic dictatorship being imposed on our next door neighbours.
From Lecvi Siba on PNG in 2016: the year of finding solutions?
A good analysis of where PNG stands. Issues affect our country were not addressed & solved while our government continue to plan for the future. I am afraid I may not see the change the government embark to bring this year 2016.
From Robert Cannon on What are exams good for? Primary and secondary school exam reform in PNG
My earlier comments appear to have been lost in a system failure. I will therefore attempt to reconstruct the main points I made again.
The first point is that a great deal is expected of examinations and tests. They generally serve a number of different decision-making purposes such as gathering data for curriculum planning, guidance, monitoring learning, selection, and certification. Increasingly, a key expectation seems to be managerial, as this Blog demonstrates. Terms like accountability, transparency, benchmarking and performance monitoring often dominate discussions at the expense of a key purpose which is to support student learning through constructive feedback. The managerial approach also tends to import a punitive attitude of fault-finding and apportioning “blame” rather than exploring reasons for success. When one examination is used for multiple purposes it is often the case that it achieves none as well as a single-purpose approach.
Second, it is wrong to equate national exams with assessment tools such as NAPLAN. National examinations will normally focus on assessing student learning in all areas of the curriculum whereas literacy and numeracy tests have a limited focus on these two dimensions only, as important as they may be. Where high stakes tests like NAPLAN are introduced it is not unusual to find a narrowing of emphasis on literacy and numeracy at the expense of other curriculum areas.
Third, there is enormous risk in assuming that ideas about teaching, learning, and assessment can be imported successfully from western nations into different cultures and contexts such as those in PNG. Gerard Guthrie’s book, <em>The Progressive Education Fallacy in Developing Countries</em>, which is largely based on his work in PNG, should be mandatory reading for anyone undertaking development work in education.
In particular, NAPLAN has raised many questions about its overall education benefit in Australia. It may well prove to be a disastrous model in PNG. It is a form of high stakes testing. I have already written about this matter in two <a href="https://devpolicy.org/caution-using-high-stakes-testing-of-student-learning-in-development-20121025/" rel="nofollow">Devpolicy</a> <a href="https://devpolicy.org/a-wicked-problem-using-high-stakes-testing-of-student-learning-in-development-part-2-20130506/" rel="nofollow">Blogs</a> and made this observation in the first:
“The more we use high-stakes tests to assess students, teachers, schools and systems, the corruptions and distortions that inevitably appear compromise the construct validity of the test and make scores uninterpretable. It is not difficult to imagine the flow-on effects of high stakes testing in developing countries already fighting the scourge of corruption in their education systems. The <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/caie20/19/1#.VpxPkfl97cs" rel="nofollow">Special Issue</a> of the journal <em>Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy and Practice</em>, Volume 19, Number 1, 2012 contains a review of the consequences of high stakes testing in developing countries as well as in Australia.”
From Tess Newton Cain on Politicising drought relief in Papua New Guinea
Thanks for this post which I found thought-provoking on a number of levels. It raises a number of questions, two of which I would like to put forward here. First, can you provide more information about why DSIP/DDA spending is considered to be more prone to politicisation than provincial or national spending because on first reading that seems somewhat counterintuitive. Secondly, to what extent, if at all, will pre-positioning for the 2017 elections mitigate the risks you've identified as MPs seek to shore up and extend their support bases if they are seeking re-election?
From Luke Paeniu on Kiribati’s land purchase in Fiji: does it make sense?
If the Kiribati land purchase in Fiji was not a sensible thing to do, what may be another more sensible strategy for Kiribati? People can work around these challenges. My question is what will you do to help Kiribati?
From Bal Kama on PNG in 2016: the year of finding solutions?
Thank you Joe. Yes, this year will bring with it its own challenges. We can only hope the country work more towards finding the right solutions.
From Paul Flanagan on The ongoing impact of the El Niño drought and frosts in Papua New Guinea
Thanks for this excellent country-wide analysis - it is exactly the type of information needed to inform good policy responses to the drought. Australian NGOs should now do more to raise awareness of the issue. The more detailed brief was also excellent. It also included some possible budgetary implications. Using the figures in the brief, it appears that the possible costs of a relief package were estimated at about K1.75 per person per day for food (460g of rice and tuna), and around an average of K9.20 air freight costs per person per day for moving this food to the required remote locations (this figure for in-country transport costs to remote locations is consistent with costs we used when I headed AusAID's humanitarian program area that delivered food around the world, although less than the helicopter based costs in the early days responding to the East Timor crisis). For 120 days for the 6 LLGs with a population of 116,000 you mentioned in the brief, the food cost would be K24m. The freight costs could well be another K128m. Three implications. First, allowing up to K2m per district from DSIP funds is clearly inadequate for those areas most affected - especially as the most affected LLGs are often in the same district. This is a national problem and a nation program should be the response. Second, drought relief is very expensive. Current national allocations (K25m) will not come close to meeting likely costs. Finally, and this is the really difficult public policy issue for PNG, given expenditure constraints, how much should be allocated to dealing with this human catastrophe relative to other challenges facing PNG (for example, funding disease resistant TB)?
From Ryan on Coal, poverty and energy access