Comments

Great article on a development topic that I think a lot of people (including aid agencies) often ignore. If it's done right, tourism definitely has potential to contribute to development in the Pacific (it already is), and there's good reason why basically every Pacific government has already identified it as a priority. Earlier this year the Marshall Islands held a tourism symposium during which the economics of tourism was discussed. We believe that it has good potential to help in our development. Tourism development has been slow, but the Marshalls now has its first major outer island resort under construction (targeting "high-end" surfers and the like -- yes, there is such a thing as a high-end surfer market!). Good on Kiribati for its innovative partnership with the Maldives! Like Kiribati, the Marshalls has a thousand empty islands -- idle assets that are ideal for small scale resorts. Global tourism demand (from investors and consumers) is growing and diversifying rapidly and little remote destinations can take advantage of this, if they position themselves right. I believe that more attention (at a regional level and from the Pacific's key development partners) needs to be paid to tourism and its potential to serve as a lever for development and poverty reduction. It's not a silver bullet, but it's a bullet nonetheless.

Labour mobility means more lenient immigration laws on regional islands and refugees to enable them to work, and earn a decent bread crumb at least!!!

Pacific is definitely not the Caribbean. We are people who have lived in our own natural habitats and that is different from being naturalised by some citizenship law. Secondly we have each our own languages, culture, customs and our ancestors before us were free men and women. Never compare the Pacific to the Caribbean thank you. And stop looking at World Bank and major world organisations for them to come and tell you what you want and how you should get it. They will only make you slaves of their systems. The Pacific needs to get together and plot its own course of destiny. We are the best and ours can be copied by the world because it is simple, untainted by world politics and it works.

Listen here for some additional comment on President Obama's visit to the region and what it means or may means for our bit of the Pacific: http://blogs.radioaustralia.net.au/english/2011/pacific/wheres-the-pacific-in-obamas-asia-pacific

Thanks for the post and all the comments. It's rather hard finding info about this topic. I will be reading them all since I have been thinking about this for a long time. I am from Thailand which used to be a developing country a while back. I have never held any aid/development scholarship since I have an 'average' profile and I am from a middle class of the country. I did my masters in environmental management at UQ graduated in 2006 on my family support and part-time work while there. I do not think that these no-string-attached scholarships fro developing countries can really have an impact. I know some of the recipients of several of such scholarships. Most of them do not contribute directly to the development of their hole countries, some of my friends after finished their PhDs have gone on to work abroad (even though a different country than the one giving scholarships) for private sector doing things that will only make the poor poorer and the rich richer for example researching for new drugs for a for-profit pharmaceutical. The main concern is that msot of these scholarship recipients only come from the 'elite' group of developing countries. They are the only people who can afford to study English to the level that fulfill the requirement of the scholarship let alone the higher education which is normally not free and available in such countries. So all in all, I would only like to conclude that this type of scholarship only serves to protect and extend the elite class in developing countries so that they can in turn benefit the giving countries when they are in high and powerful positions!!!

Thanks for writing a good analysis of the current 'crises'. I only have three comments to add. The first is that supreme court's defense of constitution is uneven: for example, they ignored references from Morauta when he was in opposition, failed to hold Somare to account on getting parliament to sit for the required number of days, and failed to take action over leadership doubts when Somare was silent and sick in Singapore. Secondly, there's been a lot of misleading conflation of the charges against chief justice and East Sepik reference. As Prime Minister O'Neill points out, the reference has already been heard and the tribunal wouldn't stop supreme court handing down decision on 9 December. Thirdly, the judiciary needs to model impeccable standards of integrity. The charges against the chief justice are serious and should be considered through the proper process that is laid down in the constitution. That the Chief Justice is avoiding this process by laying contempt charges and staying NEC decisions is very worrying.

Madam Sri, you are my personal hero. We are very very proud of you. We are hold your promise: you will be back.

I think that fundraising and media have a duty to educate, not just increase income/profile. So we are obliged to help people understand the reality behind the simplistic images. Yes, images of suffering or "triumph" are powerful, but if they reinforce people in poor countries as passive recipients of aid then we are doing the opposite of development. The medium is the message. So let's start describing work we are doing but let's also help people engage with the reality of what is keeping people poor.

Publishing states allocation in national dailies was one of the achievemnt of Dr. Iweala during her first outing as minister. In her second coming, the trend is continuing with different noble policies she is implementing including the ports refors.

I am so much proud of Ibu Sri Mulyani. She surely is capable of any crucial position in worldbank. But we need Ibu Sri to come back to Indonesia, lead and educate some more Indonesian quality future-economists, then there will be more 'Ibu Sri' ready to build and develop not only Indonesia, G20, but the world.

I think the answer is quite simple, actually: paris and accra bye bye, seems to be the mantra many at post repeat in silence, holding their breath, while pretending to do the service delivery the government of recipient countries should, with the help of post, do.

Satish and Tess, Thanks for your comments on my blog. On Tess's point, ODE does a good job in terms of being transparent about which questions it is asking. For some of its evaluations (I noticed rural development and civil society) you can see their terms of reference up on the ODE website. On Satish's point, its not the case that ODE was modelled on the Bank's Evaluation Department (now called the Independent Evaluation Group or IEG). IEG reports to the Bank's Board, not to its President, and so is able to maintain its independence. There is no such protection for ODE, since it reports to the head of AusAID. I don't see the Independent Evaluation Committee as another layer of bureaucracy, but as a mechanism for ensuring independence and timeliness. Which take's me back to Tess's question. The IEG produces a lot more output then ODE, but then it's a much bigger outfit. In fact, it does a brief review of every completed Bank project, not to mention a number of country evaluations, thematic reports, and an annual aid effectiveness review. A more relevant comparison is on timeliness. I don't have the details, but, as far as I can tell, IEG manages to avoid long delays around the release of its reports. It certainly manages to get its annual review out every year, something ODE has struggled with.