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Just last week I drove up the National Highlands Highway from Madang to Banz in the newly created Jiwaka Province (formerly Western Highlands Province). I visited several feeder roads to the remote villages in parts of Simbu Province and Eastern Highlands Province (EHP). My observation is in agreement with Andrew that the past ten years of high economic growth at the macro level has not trickled down to the micro level. Many rural villages and some urban dwellers in PNG are struggling at the fringes of deteriorating infrastructures. The state of the national Highlands Highway which is the main economic lifeline of two- thirds of the nations populations is deplorable. Some section of the roads are virtually impassable. It makes me wonder: what has happened to all the economic growth trumpeted in ADB, ANZ and BPNG reports? Alas, the 10 million Kina District Support Grant given to each MP each year for five years. Some MPs like the Speaker of Parliament Hon. Jeffery Nape have been MPs for 2 consecutive terms (10 years).

Interesting article. I wonder whether committing to providing migrants with "pastoral care" is asking too much.

What a depressingly narrow and robotic, if stylistically predictable analysis, there's more to life than rational underlying imperatives, just ask those you love. Good attempt at deconstructing even lazier analysis though!

Thanks to Erik and Stephen for their considered reflections on my reply. I’ll leave it to others who have had closer contact with KFCP more recently to comment further on how it has fared relative to the opportunities and constraints it has faced. I’ll limit my comments here to a few further reflections on the policy context in which demonstration activities are operating. On the fundamental issue of whether large-scale REDD+ funds are too distant and uncertain, I assume that the authors’ concern about the $100 billion a year pledge is that it is too far into the future to provide the basis for a national REDD+ initiative, rather than that Indonesia’s share of $100 billion would be too small to be considered ‘large-scale’ (bear in mind that a prominent review of REDD financing estimated that halving deforestation globally by 2030 would cost around $17-$33 billion a year). While a target for 2020 may seem distant, negotiations about scaling up current pledges of finance in the intervening years are anything but remote. This year in the UN climate negotiations wealthy countries will be under considerable pressure to pledge funds for the period 2013-15 at levels significantly higher than current pledges of around $10 billion a year. It is notable that in a context where the real value of aid has fallen in 2011, wealthy countries have continued to stand by their short-term and long-term climate finance pledges, even if the allocation of pledged funds to specific projects has been slower than expected. Moreover, several recently established multilateral REDD+ funds (including the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility and the Forest Investment Program) are now reaching the point where they can disburse more substantial resources. Nor is market-based REDD+ finance before 2020 altogether out of the picture. For example, work is underway on rules that could allow REDD+ credits to be admitted under California’s cap-and-trade scheme from 2015. Whether REDD+ will be able to compete successfully with other climate-related funding for energy and adaptation remains dependent on both the success of demonstration activities and larger-scale policy initiatives such as the Indonesian moratorium. Reported abuses of the moratorium such as the Tripa peat swamp in Aceh are certainly serious (note that a new criminal investigation into that case has just been launched), but such cases also need to be put into a broader perspective. A 2012 report by the World Resources Institute, while likewise acknowledging that enforcement will remain a major challenge, assessed that violations of the moratorium in its initial phase have been ‘rare’ (rather than ‘rife’). The key issue is not whether compliance with the moratorium will be perfect (which it surely will not be) but whether there has been enough compliance to start shifting Indonesia’s forest emissions below a business as usual trajectory. Until that data is available, individual breaches will only tell us part of the story. Finally, multilateral REDD+ negotiations may be frustratingly slow, but that doesn’t mean they are leading nowhere. UNFCCC submissions are notoriously vague but there is often a considerable amount of technical work underlying them that is fed into negotiations, particularly in the UNFCCC’s subsidiary bodies. As the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) has reported, the results on REDD+ from last year’s climate conference in Durban were mixed, but there was nevertheless important progress in several key areas. A senior UK lawyer on carbon markets commented, "For the private sector interested in long-term reputable investments associated with REDD+ actions, this is a very positive decision.” Each step in the negotiations may be slower than what’s needed, and there remains a real risk that the REDD+ negotiations will falter. In this sense, I certainly agree with Erik and Stephen that current REDD+ efforts are not large enough or rapid enough to match ongoing drivers of deforestation. But as in the case of demonstration activities, it doesn’t follow that the current approach needs to be abandoned altogether (rather than built upon) if what’s really needed is a greater sense of urgency coupled with a high-level commitment on the part of both developed and developing countries to make REDD+ work.

Thanks David and Paul for your comments. You both point to the fervor surrounding RCTs - it's unfortunate if institutions think them to be the be all and end all. I certainly hope (and indeed believe) that AusAID will not go down the path of funding projects that are only suitable for RCTs (and by extension platinum style evaluations which also incorporate qualitative tools). For many reasons, including the ones mentioned above, we need an array of evaluations of different rigor depending on the cost, benefit, practicalities and technical expertise available.

It has been pointed out to me that the Independent Evaluation Committee does not report to the AusAID Director General. It is responsible to the Development Effectiveness Standing Committee (DESC). This is true, see the terms of Reference of the IEC here http://www.ode.ausaid.gov.au/publications/pdf/iec-tor.pdf . However the DESC is chaired by the Director General of AusAID see the DESC terms of reference here www.ode.ausaid.gov.au/publications/pdf/desc-tor.rtf . It is notable that in the United Kingdom that the Independent Commission on Aid Impact reports to Parliament through the House of Commons International Development Committee.

Great information 🙂

It is important to note that in some aid agencies, the fervor for RCTs has led to an expansion of projects that can be evaluated in this way at the expense of those for which RCTs are not appropriate but which might have a longer lasting impact. For example, Andrew Natsios, a former Administrator of USAid describes in "The Clash of the Counter Bureaucracy and Development" how the demand for the so-called "gold standard" of RCTs (although I see that it is now "platinum" - is this evaluation inflation?) has biased the choice of projects that USAid supports towards those that are suitable for RCT evaluation. He points out that initiatives that have the most transformative impact are those that are difficult to measure and also carry the greatest risk of failure. No good bureaucrat wants a failed project, so risk taking in this way is eschewed. I have long maintained that we can learn as much from failed projects as we can from successful ones as long as the reasons for failure are carefully documented and become part of institutional memory and future project design. Alas, one of consequences of the rapid turnover of staff in many aid agencies means that institutional memory is rare or non-existent.

Dinuk, I agree with your observations regarding the need for mixed methods approaches, and an ex ante evaluation perspective. I am the research director of a large evaluation of the AusAID-funded, Australian Sports Commission-implemented Australian Sports Outreach Program. This evaluation is employing a mixed methods approach, however the quantitative component is restricted due to the ex post nature of the design (and therefore no baseline, no possibility of a control etc), this is a pity but there is not much we can do about it (so is this a 'bronze' or maybe 'silver' standard design?). Due to the fervor surrounding RCTs there is increasing pressure on evaluation consultants to employ the most rigorous methods possible, however for the reasons you mention this is almost always not possible; more needs to be done to ensure that donors understand when such methods are possible and when they are not. I agree with your call for AusAID to review upcoming projects to assess which of them may be suited to platinum standard evaluations. David <em>Dr David Carpenter is the Principal Consultant, International Development at Sustineo in Canberra</em>

Many thanks to Jonathan Pickering for his thoughtful assessment of our paper and blog. Jonathan sets out three reasons for optimism about a demonstration project approach. Firstly, he mentions the $100 billion climate finance target by 2020 agreed at Copenhagen as a potentially major source of REDD funds for Indonesia. Here we simply repeat the fundamental point we make in the paper and blog: “The prospect of large-scale REDD funds arriving some time in the future is too distant and uncertain to provide sufficiently strong incentives to tackle the deep-seated drivers of deforestation and peat conversion in Indonesia.” The second reason given for optimism is that not only is the 2011 moratorium in place, but that a new regulation on spatial planning is in place for the Kalimantan provinces. As our paper points out, abuses of the moratorium are rife. Sadly, such abuses are ongoing, the latest case in point being the Tripa peat swamp in Aceh. This area should have been safe from conversion for oil palm, being covered both by the moratorium and by Indonesian law which protected deep peat like Tripa from conversion. But Tripa was excised from the moratorium, and in recent weeks canals were dug and fires set to destroy the forest. A legal appeal by an Indonesian NGO was rejected. The Presidential Regulation on spatial planning in Kalimantan also needs close examination for its actual impacts on the ground. The CIFOR response was cautious enough; another commentator argued that the decree’s removal of the `Limited Production Forest’ category could result in the loss of a further 3 million hectares of forests in Central Kalimantan. We agree with Jonathan’s third point that demonstration activities have an important role to play. But then it is up to KFCP to actually demonstrate something. While its community efforts may have been useful, after nearly four years not a single hectare of drained peatland has been re-flooded, nor a single tonne of peatland emissions avoided. Are the foundations of a peatland REDD mechanism in place? As far as we are aware, long-identified gaps in scientific knowledge of peatland emissions remain unfilled. Until this happens, it will not be possible to establish a sound accounting methodology for peatland emissions, not can any emission reductions achieved through KFCP project be measured. Not to our knowledge have baseline reference emission levels been defined. Thus little progress has been made in demonstrating how a peatland REDD mechanism could work. Over the last four years perhaps another 5 million hectares of forest have been lost in Indonesia. How many more will be lost by the time KFCP has successfully demonstrated a peatland REDD methodology? Perhaps, as Jonathan argues, KFCP is raising the profile of peatland emissions in UNFCCC negotiations. Though what, if anything, these negotiations are leading to is unclear. And the use of KFCP in the negotiations is a double-edged sword, as it adds to the pressure to put a positive spin of KFCP progress. Thus, Australia’s December 2011 submission to UNFCCC’s SBSTA states that `The Kalimantan Forests and Climate Partnership (KFCP) is one of the most advanced large-scale REDD+ demonstration activities in Indonesia’. It is a sentence often seen in official reporting on KFCP progress. In what sense KFCP is one of the most advanced REDD activities escapes us. It is this slow progress, and the assertion that KFCP may be performing as well if not better than other REDD projects, against the backdrop of continued deforestation, that draws us to the conclusion that there has been too much focus on REDD demonstration activities, and that it is time for a new approach. Erik Olbrei and Stephen Howes

Thanks Steve for a useful account on the 'rise and fall' of poverty (as an issue of development policy focus, not poverty itself) in the Pacific. Poverty is a prickly and often politicized issue in many Pacific countries, including my own, the Marshalls. Some, but not all, leaders are still convinced that we in the Pacific, with our extended families and access to land and basic resources like fish and traditional crops, are somehow magically immune from hardship. But for many people this is far from reality. In the Marshalls I would say fully one-third of all families are really struggling to survive - and things are not improving. This is a major reason for the massive outmigration we are witnessing. Traditional safety nets for many islanders are deteriorating, but modern safety nets are not there to replace them, so the most vulnerable among us are simply falling through the cracks, unless they can migrate or get some remittances. This is especially a problem in no-growth economies and regions, of which there are quite a number in the Pacific. But even in high growth situations, poverty persists, which has led us to the new focus on 'inclusive growth' and some resurgent interest in social protection. In short, I agree!

hi ... interesting blogs and perspectives .. just wanted to add re importance of context, particulary when aid donors are funding reform programs - need to be realistic about how long it takes to achieve expected outcomes and also the signifcant challenges and issues that needs to be addressed .. .. also ongoing costs and maintanence of various initiatives introduced through aid programs and its implications on Goverment's recurrent budget needs to be considered particularly before procurement of expensive equipment and other big ticket items .. as well as maintanence costs of infrastructure, etc funded through aid funds ..perhaps 'affordability' of aid interventions particularly for the recipient country also needs to be part of the discussions on aid efficiency and effectiveness ... welcome other's views on the issue thanks