Comments

Yes, it is the best way forward.

Great and impressive. We can improve how partners enrich water development and essential benefits in many rural populations, especially for the school age group of young people. I would like to seek advice and prompt understanding as those are some of the issues I see in my village and community. I need assistance please.

I'm a Rohingya refugee. I'm in Saudia Arabia. I don't have a passport. Please help me.

Hi dear Tovi Amoa. I am Simon Solo Embro from the Papua New Guinea Churches Unity Association Inc that brings the community peace and support church projects. Yes, I am more happy to see your organisation going forward in supporting the communities and individuals and very happy to discuss with you forward to receiving some support from you and partner with your organisation to working to strengthen the work.

Hi Saroj, the point on the relationship between WASH and IPV is interesting.

Colin, I’m embarrassed it’s taken so long for me to respond to your thoughtful comments on my book on the economic thought of Fred Fisk. Please excuse my discourtesy. Your remarks are particularly welcome because of your actual experience of working – some 40 years ago! – with Fred in the island Pacific. Your positive account of that experience matches the generally high level of regard in which he was held by his contemporaries. I regret not personally having had the opportunity of working with Fred, because for a long time I did other things in other places. However I agree fully with your positive assessment of his personality and goals. I hope that a reading of my book will give you a more systematic grasp of the principles which underlay Fisk’s idea of ‘subsistence affluence’. It was my aim to explain his ideas to a new generation of readers, as well as considering whether they may still be of some continuing relevance to contemporary conditions. I’m glad if the narrative also helps an older ‘development’ practitioner to see his encounter with ‘Fiskianism’ in a new light. Your work with Fisk occurred at about the time he retired from ANU and was beginning to apply his ideas in a more generalized or informal fashion, rather than in the rigorous and formal manner of his initial work, published in the ‘Economic Record’ in the 1960s. In the late-1960s and early 1970s Fisk met eminent economists pursuing interests parallel to his own, This was a watershed between his formal theorisation of PNG ‘affluence’ and his later, more pragmatic application of ‘Fiskian’ principles in other parts of Oceania. After this he gave less emphasis to the ‘transition’ from subsistence to market exchange. Instead, he urged giving attention to the ‘mixed subsistence/cash sector’ of indigenous agriculture, into which most Pacific cultivators had already ‘transited’. I imagine that he promoted these ideas at the time you worked together and that he did not argue them in any formal theoretical framework, even though the original notion of ‘affluence’ continued to underlie his thinking. I was unfamiliar with the categories you recall Fisk as having used in your discussions – regarding countries which were ‘fully furnished’, ‘partly furnished’, and ‘unfurnished’. However these terms are instantly recognizable to me. He used such language because he had moved away from an ideal of affluence based on particular parts of PNG. Instead he had come to recognize varying degrees of affluence observable in other parts of the island Pacific. These were, as you say, based on ‘on the availability of land, water, forests, mineral resources, and so on’ in each of the small island states. In my book I have dealt with his comparative approach to the small states in chapters 10 and 11. Finally, thank you for the positive tone of your comment

In my own understanding of this article, its important to point out countries with bigger land mass and bigger population have lower percentage compared to countries with smaller land mass and small population. If a country has 1 Million Population and 700,000 people use Facebook, their percentage is 70% which is higher than if for example Papua New Guinea at 14%. Thats 1.4Million of 10 Million People on Facebook (Actual Facebook Data). (i think the 14%) data is drawn using 10 Million Population Figure..)

Well presented. Now I understand why the progress of autonomy is delayed.

Thanks, very useful piece.

I totally agree with Anura. The article is so hung up on solar and fails to recognise the potential of mini hydro schemes in PNG. A Decentralised Electricity Supply (DES) Policy workshopped jointly by USAID-PEP, IFC and NEA to stakeholders in 2023 and 2024 appears to have flamed out largely because of fears from PPL loosing its loss making isolated grids to Concession type arrangements or entirely to reputable private sector operators and PPP arrangements between the Provincial Governments and private sector operators. NEA needs to revive the DES policy and push for its adoption ASAP as maintaining the status quo is simply not an option.

Sobering article, Rick. We need to pull our socks up!! Hope you are well.

I'm so glad I came across this thought provoking yet inspiring reflection. I couldn't agree more, the Regional architecture is now more fragmented then ever, and we have become spectators to issues in our Region. A wonderful reflection worth read. Tenkyu Tru