Comments

A very timely and astute blog by a researcher highly experienced in this field. Australia can do much to support early learning in pre-school age children in our Pacific neighbouring countries including through increasing financial support. We should do it. Part of the challenge in tackling the need for urgent action on climate change is having an informed voting public. Education is critical for an informed voting public. And the best place, as the blog points out, to start education is in the very early years. With support at home being so limited because of the disadvantage parents have faced it is right for the government to step up. Similar issues face First Australian 0 to 5 year olds - some of whom in remote communities have not held a pen until they start school. Let's work together and pressure the Federal Government to invest in early childhood education in areas that have the highest need - in the Pacific and here in Australia.

So much THIS! Thank you for this articulation. I was chewed up and spit out of the UNICEF system through a Developmental Evaluation, ironically in which they were supposedly interested in identifying the "deep systems" that were keeping them from a more child-centered approach. . . their inability to even contract effectively with me in an adaptive/responsive manner was painful. As a women-owned small business in the field we trip on these types of systems all the time and find our strategy and human-centered approaches are engaged to as dressing on top of predetermined wholes that just give us latitude to scratch the surface. This is a discussion long overdue. Thank you.

Good question. I haven't been able to find an authoritative statement of how the assumed funds are to be used but it is the case that Australia is focusing on infrastructure, particularly on the undersea, high speed telecommunications cable linking us to PNG.

Thank you JK for your comments. Yes, Australia's increase in aid to the Pacific is a poorly disguised means of counteracting Chinese influence. In my blog I point to the example of FSM where, despite a lucrative Compact with the US, Chinese influence is nevertheless strong so Australia's withdrawal of committed aid to Pakistan and Indonesia would seem a knee-jerk reaction to a perceived threat rather than a well thought out strategy to deliver value for money. I can't speak on what aid model would be preferable for our bilateral aid programs in the Pacific but value-for-money aid is an issue that cuts across the means of aid apportionment. However aid is delivered it's past time for our government to re-evaluate the effective use of our taxpayer's money.

Thanks Nic. Yes, there is without a doubt a large element of 'aid fatigue' on behalf of the recipients of decades of aid and I can fully understand where they're coming from in many cases. It is part of the broader fatigue that also affects donors, aid workers, consultants and many others caught in that net. You're also right to ascribe it to a global context rather than just a Pacific problem. I have seen this played out in a more graphic way in Kosovo and Afghanistan where, once locals were tired of the post-conflict aid community, they began to target them with IEDs, bombings and armed attacks. Unfortunately, it is at times a few insensitive consultants, donor staff, military or others who turn a once welcoming attitude into one of resentment. Public sentiment toward the international community is not a given and where this breaks down, the whole question of intervention and aid effectiveness needs to be re-addressed.

Thanks Steve. That is probably the hardest question of all to answer and, where it might be clear that certain aid is not working, or not working as well as it could, a definitive solution is a far more difficult prospect. In my line of work I could often see what could have worked a lot better but the impetus to make it happen would have had to come from the highest level within the donor and recipient organisations, neither of which is much interested in seeking the honest opinions of the people on the ground, such as aid workers, consultants, donor's staff, etc. It is all too easy to throw money at developing countries, possibly buy a few political favours along the way, and tick that box. From the recipient's point of view, the money is going to come in anyway and often with no long-term follow up of its effectiveness, creating an unbroken cycle of dependency. When decades of aid to many African and Pacific Island countries has done little to filter down to those most in need, surely it's time to critically appraise what has worked and what hasn't.

Thanks Adimaibole, Aid to Africa is not without its critics – see Dambisa Moyo's 'Dead Aid' (Penguin) – and I saw massive wastage of aid money there. On the other hand I worked with senior government officials and local staff who were keen to take on board recommendations and to improve their processes. From my perspective, value for money comes down to how structurally safe any form of infrastructure is; how long a new road will last; how much money was wasted on failure to undertake proper site assessments; did locals learn new and better means of planning, delivering and maintaining the new infrastructure; how effectively could I operate in the recipient's environment, e.g. did I receive support from government ministers and staff to assist me in working to my ToRs? Probably one of the most important aspects of value for money is the ability of the recipient to carry on my work, implement the changes that I have initiated and teach their successors how to do these things. This is a necessary (but not sufficient) means of breaking the aid cycle.

Lenize, thank you for your comments. It seems that we are talking about different types of sustainability. The context that I use is sustainability of the longer term viability of infrastructure delivery. It is the failure to ensure this (among other things) that leads to poorly spent aid funds. I like Pacific Islanders very much and their friendly, easy going lifestyle but while many aspects of the Pacific way of life have merit it should be kept in mind that aid is not forced upon these nations. It is willingly accepted. My emphasis is on infrastructure development which is not merely a tool to impose our 'better way of life' it is a means of delivering infrastructure which is safer and aimed at improving health, welfare, education and economic benefits. I saw first-hand schools that had collapsed in the 2005 earthquake in North Sumatra, killing up to 200 children. We re-built schools that were designed to resist earthquake loading. We built clinics and roads to get people to and from these facilities and to centres of trade. Cultural awareness in this type of work is paramount. It is not a matter of arrogantly assuming our way of life is better. The lives and welfare of these peoples are as valuable and as important as ours. They deserve infrastructure that will ensure their continued safety and well being. We need to find a way to deliver this more effectively.

Thanks Carolyn for this very much your practical work into the aid program across the globe. I have also worked in the aid program for the last 15 years but mainly in PNG; with GFATM, ILO, WB, EU and DFAT and particularly in the health and education sectors. I have a great deal of understanding in different services delivery models and across conflicting priorities all under the disguise of aid programs. While working with DFAT on the aid program over the last 5 years, I have a different understanding to the way the Australian Aid is delivered, especially in the Pacific. The policy view in Canberra currently is “Pacific step up”, thus increasing the development aid to the Pacific. This is more of a counteractive approach to the influence of China in the Pacific. Your point on “aid should go to where it is more effective” is a valid point. With my experience, I would add the term “selective engagement” to particular development program than spreading the aid across the different sectors. With my view on selective engagement, unlike Australian Aid, other aid programs are sector specific and fully committed on the particular sector to address a specific problem or development gap effectively. For Australian Aid, it spread across and encompass almost all the development sectors in a country or region. It may seen as appropriate for public diplomacy purpose but in terms of effective development, impact is less or thinly spread across the sectors. Selective engagement would be a better model of development, particularly for bilateral aid program.

I’m interested in your comments about the supposed “disengagement” of Pacific staff. I’ve never seen any serious research on this question, to unpack multiple possible causes (eg cultural obligations for workers that take precedence over workplace obligations; lack of instruction in local languages; lack of relationship building by consultants etc etc). Over many years, I’ve come to believe that many Pacific officials are just sick and tired of short term consultants arriving with pre-packaged “solutions” that might work well in a large country in Africa or South East Asia, but are completely unrealistic for a small island developing state. Add in a dash of cultural arrogance, and the easiest way to respond is to wait for the consultant to finish their contract and go away. The late Epeli Hao’ofa satirised this decades ago in Tales of the Tikongs, which should be required reading for anyone purporting to lead a team in the Pacific. Too many OECD consultants arrive seeing the challenge as a “Pacific” problem rather than a global problem that Pacific Islanders are responding to.

After reading this article by someone with so much experience in the field I am surprised at the tone of this article. The Pacific are Australia's direct neighbours and aside from political tugs of war with infrastructure, the Pacific live much more sustainably than anyone of us arrogant estern, developed nations people. The new civilised is to live as they do in a affluentsubsistence, self sufficient capacity with little to no carbon footprint. We are so superior thinking of them as clients because we give them money that is often politically motivated. But the fact of the matter is we arrogantly assume our way of life is better...not in terms of climate change it is not nor all the health issues when they begin eating western food. Maybe if we look at aid in supporting the local culture and their vision for developing that fits within their values and inherent strengths. Rather than their culture fitting our aid programmes. That would be money better spent. One day when our Western economy fails they will be ok. We will not. We will rely on traditional knowledge for the challenges that face us as a humanity. Issues of Climate Change and sustainability in rehabilitating the damage we have already inflicted on the earth and its people. Those at the cold face of this consumer driven western societies are the ones facing the effects of climate change already. The Pacific is extremely vulnerable in this regard and deserves us to continue to provide aid for our lack of climate change action and policy. They are reaping the destructive effects and will continue to in their daily reliance on the weather and the environment to survive.

Hi Carolyn, thankyou for this thought provoking article. I work in development in the Pacific, currently in Fiji. Could you please advise what metrics you would use to define VFM and how would you say the Pacitic compares by these metrics to say Agrica, as I understand you have also had experience there. It would be good to hear your comparison.