Comments

Thanks for the referral to your other very good blog Grant. It may be true then, what I was told some years ago - "when you sup with the devil, use a long spoon." - when we were trying to fashion an approach to an invitation from a politician that had a public reputation for "corruption", (whatever that means). To me, your example from your <a href="https://devpolicy.org/the-international-anti-corruption-conference-and-the-case-of-the-disappearing-prime-minister-20150831/" rel="nofollow">other blog</a> of the Malaysian PM highlights the complexity of the issues around corruption, and that progress is made primarily in the political arena of local vested interests and competing identities. No area of public policy advocacy rewards purists, and compromise between powerful interest groups is an essential aspect of policy forward movement. I think it's necessary for the anticorruption movement to engage with pollies, because it's an essentially political fight. But who they engage with, and when, is a matter of judgement that is best made by those who will bear the consequences of getting it wrong. Whether TI has made the wrong call in engaging with the Malaysian PM, and then disengaging, is impossible to tell right now, but I think that anticorruption advocates will need to keep "supping with the devil", if they are to make progress. I can recall another quote from Gough Whitlam that I think is relevant to this point - "only the impotent are pure". To your other point in your blog about target audiences and the costs of attending conferences, I definitely agree that events such as the IACC, like most international shindigs, are beyond your average grassroots advocate, as well as academics, and are worse off for it. And when one considers that many attendees are public servants employed by governments (with their attendance funded by the same), then one can legitimately question the personal fervour of many of those who end up there, which is galling when one knows there are countless grassroots anticorruption advocates around the world who would give their right arm for the chance to go to an IACC conference. However, at the end of the day anticorruption progress is mostly about coalitions, and TI would seem to me to have their broader approach about right at least in that regard, even when the IACC doesn't quite hit-the-mark. Thanks again for your excellent blogs.

The focus on domestic resource mobilization is a big step forward.

please am very pleased that the current government is taking the initiatives to address the current issues that are experience in the highlands of PNG and am very concerned about my very dry place IALIBU ..thank you very much.

Thank you Bryant for this important post. It is also positive to see Vini is drawing on the considerable material that fortunately was documented from the 1997 experience. When going through the historic material, it is not clear what level of public resources were applied to help mitigate the impacts of the drought and frosts. The 1998 budget papers suggest an allocation of K25m for drought relief, K38m for additional education subsidies (aimed to lessen the impacts of the drought on local cash flows) and K8m for medical supplies. Donor expenditure is unclear - one figure is AUD30m in relief from Australia. Other donors were involved, as were NGOs, church and community groups. Given inflation from 1997 to 2014 of 240% (using CPI indexes from the IMF), a population increase is some areas of 50%, and an AUD to Kina exchange rate of around 2 to 1, the total budget requirement may need to total K668m ((K25m+K38m+K8m+K60m (donors)) x 3.4 (inflation) x 1.5 (population)). This is a rough calculation, but it clearly suggests the current allocation of K30m is inadequate - less than one-twentieth of an indicative value of the 1997 response. However, given the fiscal pressures the government is now under due to spending LNG revenues before they were received, and then the collapse of international commodity prices, there appears little fiscal space to move. However, the funds were found in 1997 despite fiscal stringency in place under an economic reform instigated in 1995 due to poor economic management. Hopefully, public funds can be better spent this time through using private sector supply chains, traditional coping mechanisms can be drawn upon, and more emphasis can be given to actual need rather than politics. Agriculture prices also moved upwards during the 1997 crisis which more than offset falls in quantities driven by the drought - this helped support local incomes (especially coffee but also copra and cocoa - although oil prices fell to US14 per barrel). It is unclear whether this beneficial offset through agriculture price rises will occur in the current drought/frost disaster. One way to accomplish a similar effect is to allow the Kina to depreciate more quickly (which will increase agricultural incomes as exports become more valuable in Kina terms). Given the potential immediate humanitarian impacts, the medium-term impacts on the agriculture sector, and the possible long-term impacts on children's health if inadequate nutrition is supplied during their growing years, there is a need to urgently assess the required level of public resources needed and the macroeconomic levers which may be able to assist. In addition to domestic action, this may include having to go to the international community to request assistance.

It was full Optional Preferential Voting in the Elections from 1964 to 1977 which delivered Members who were largely representative of their whole electorate. Vote buying was established by the First Past the Post system. Limited Preferential Voting for only 3 candidates never had any chance of remedying the problem. This is why the Members, who had been elected by buying votes agreed to its introduction. Having to buy 3 preferences was never going to be a problem to them. They knew they had to appear to being doing something, so they agreed to the limitation of 3 preferences, knowing that they could still buy themselves back in. Full Preferences would not only have been too expensive, but also to complex and difficult to manage. Do not underestimate the political nous of PNG politicians!

Thanks Jo. Agree entirely. Table S9 (pages 38-42) of the original UN report also provides estimates of Total Fertility Rates for all countries, starting in 1975-1980 and going through to 2095-2100. For the countries you mention, the report estimates that total fertility (average number of children per woman) in Kiribati goes from 5.1 in 1975-80 down to 2.05 in 2095-2100.The corresponding figures for Solomon Islands is 7.04 down to 1.94 and from 5.75 down to 1.90 for Vanuatu. Table S10 on page 43 of the report also ranks the ten countries in the world with the highest total fertility for various time periods. The table is dominated in all time periods by African countries, but with two interesting exceptions. First, Timor Leste, with an average of 5.91 children per woman is ranked as having the ninth highest fertility in the world in the current period 2010-2015. (Niger, with an average 7.63 children is ranked as having the highest fertility in the world in this period). The second interesting exception to the dominance of Africa is that the State of Palestine, with an average 7.5 children per woman had the tenth highest rate of fertility in the world during the period 1975 -1980. In every other case, in every other time period, countries in Africa are in the top ten countries in the world for the highest levels of total fertility. Ian

Thanks Jenny.You raise a good point. Page 19 of the UN Report does actually project a decline in the population of Fiji from 924,000 in 2050 to 696,000 in 2100 as cited in the blog (ie it is not a typo). But there is no explanation given in the report for that fall. I have gone back to the original authors of the report asking for a clarification / explanation and will post this as soon as I hear back from them. Thanks again for raising this issue. Ian

As God created this world, he also created our parents subsequently to guide us in this rough world; likewise he purposely chosen the leaders to lead us into a right destination which God has predestined for us. But from my own perspective, everything is malfunctioning due to the leaders political conspiracy which is not good in God's sight. Such problems are just like rats coming out from within the nearest forest so leaders need to clear those unwanted weeds to prevent them from being conjured. Moreover, we as a educated person and unique individuals we have teach the next group of people who are following our footprints not to be like us but to be better than us. Do what you can do for Papua New Guinea and P.N.G. will change. Thank you Imma LEME YARAPAKI.

Marcus, I don’t think that de Tocqueville’s or Gramsci’s conceptions of civil society require industrialisation per se. PNG has numerous civil society groups (churches, NGOs, etc) and it’s not really industrialised. The rural and remote areas of PNG do have civil society groups that are active, although they are more fragmented than in other parts of the world. The interconnection between local and international civil society groups, and the PNG state, is more likely to occur in urban areas, but is not constrained to cities. In the rural areas of PNG, there needs to be a greater focus on how civil society groups are engaging with political society at the district level, given the moves to decentralise decision making and massively increase constituency funds. Gramsci would want us to understand how civil society might be complicit in both supporting poor governance and promoting accountability. And what civil society groups’ connections to politicians and bureaucrats means for their capacity to empower citizens (he wanted to see citizens empowered for the revolution, but I’d settle for stronger and more equitable democracy…). Also, you may be interested in a <a href="https://devpolicy.org/the-international-anti-corruption-conference-and-the-case-of-the-disappearing-prime-minister-20150831/" rel="nofollow">blog I’ve just published</a> on the affair of the IACC and the Malaysian PM. It further highlights the difficulties of claims about non-partisanship among international anti-corruption actors.

I can find no discussion in the text on why it is assumed that the population of Fiji is going to fall by close to 300,000 people between 2050 and 2100. please explain - I imagine it is a typo? (I shall look at your breakdowns on birth rates etc but think this figure is unlikely

Well said Margaret! One of the few who are qualified to pass judgement on the subject.

Could it be a co-incidence that this story was beaten up just before the Pacific Islands Forum, where Australia will face expressions of concern over recent cuts to ODA and meagre contribution to the Green Climate Fund?