The Role of Agricultural Institutions in Providing Support Towards Sustainable Rural Development in South Pacific Island Countries

This paper examines the agricultural training in higher education institutions and tertiary colleges, their pre-eminent role and how best they can contribute to alleviate poverty in rural communities in Fiji and other South Pacific island countries. These institutions provide support through training farmers (vocational and adult education) and/or extension officers and providing researchers. Unfortunately, agricultural training institutions are not adapting to the rapid changing times early enough and have more or less maintained the traditional way of training. There is a need for agricultural institutions to amend their programs to facilitate the new emerging areas, together with new learning and teaching frameworks, establish new partnerships with the private sector in addition to expanding their representation in governance in addition to holding continuous dialogue with policymakers. Further, these institutions can potentially showcase local customs and knowledge, mirroring the regional culture, and ethical customs of the Pacific island community, as well as global movements and development forces. In reinforcing their title role as contributors to a culture of education and rural agricultural development, we suggest that agricultural institutions engage more directly and more effectively in partnerships and dialogue with other local agricultural stakeholders and their surrounding rural communities in Fiji and other Pacific island countries.

Policing Gender Violence in Vanuatu

Gender violence is one of the greatest challenges to peace and security in Pacific Island Countries. The persistence of this problem is often linked to the limits of state-based policing authority. It is argued that this approach fails to grapple adequately with hybrid systems of regulatory authority in Pacific Island Countries that include customary and faith-based forms of authority. Feminist inquiry into the difficulties Pacific women face in securing justice when they are the victims of gendered crimes frequently highlights the gendered failings of state and customary systems of justice, finding that both systems reflect and further entrench the subordinated status of women. This paper addresses the tension between the apparent limits of state-centred models of policing and the shortfalls of hybridised structures of regulatory authority. It reports a theoretically informed empirical study that investigated how ni-Vanuatu women understand gender violence and the role that police can play in its prevention. Using participant research and photo elicitation surveys, we asked 1) how does the authority of policing agencies operate when addressing violence against women in relation to other sites of international and local sociocultural authority in the Vanuatu context, and 2) how do women understand and value policing authority relative to other sites of regulatory authority? We found that, while police in Vanuatu operate in the context of constructive complementarity with other forms of authority, women valued police, identifying them as the key source of regulatory authority that could provide help if their partner became violent or if they were threatened.

Application of Seawater Plant Technology for supporting the Achievement of SDGs in Tarawa, Kiribati

Pacific island countries, including Kiribati, are suffering from a shortage of essential resources as well as a reduction in their living space due to sea level rise and coastal erosion from climate change, groundwater pollution and vegetation changes. Global activities to solve these problems are being progressed by the UN's efforts to implement SDGs. Pacific island countries can adapt to climate change by using abundant marine resources. In other words, seawater plants can assist in achieving SDGs #2, #6 and #7 based on SDGs #14 in these Pacific island countries. Under the auspice of Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), Korea Research Institute of Ships and Ocean Engineering (KRISO) established the Sustainable Seawater Utilization Academy (SSUA) in 2016, and its 30 graduates formed the SSUA Kiribati Association in 2017. The Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries (MOF) of the Republic of Korea awarded ODA fund to the Association. By taking advantage of seawater resource and related plants, it was able to provide drinking water and vegetables to the local community from 2018 to 2020. Among the various fields of education and practice provided by SSUA, the Association hope to realize hydroponic cultivation and seawater desalination as a self-support project through a pilot project. To this end, more than 140 households are benefiting from 3-stage hydroponics, and a seawater desalination system in connection with solar power generation was installed for operation. The Association grows and supplies vegetable seedlings from the provided seedling cultivation equipment, and is preparing to convert to self-support business from next year. The satisfaction survey shows that Tarawa residents have a high degree of satisfaction with the technical support and its benefits. In the future, it is hoped that SSUA and regional associations will be distributed to neighboring island countries to support their SDGs implementations.

Public policy processes in the Pacific islands: A study of policy initiation, formulation and implementation in Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Samoa and regional inter-governmental organisations

<p>This thesis examines the manner in which public policies are initiated, formulated and implemented in Pacific island countries and regional organisations, and determines the factors which are most critical for their effective implementation. It employs narrative inquiry and grounded theory approaches, supported by the computer software Nvivo, to data collection and analysis of case studies from Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Samoa, and key regional inter-governmental organisations. 128 semi-structured interviews were drawn from ten policy cases (three for each of the Pacific island countries and one from the Region’s Pacific Plan), together with a general narrative of the policy environment spread across all four contexts. A social constructionism worldview allows for the grounding of the research and its findings for both subject and context of the study. Participant voices are utilised as rich descriptions of policy processes, triangulation provided by documentary analyses and participant observation. Motivating this inquiry was my observation of the lack of visibly significant improvements in service delivery in Samoa and other Pacific island countries. These perceptions echoed criticisms in the literature about the slow improvement of development performance across the region despite high levels of foreign aid. Yet, such assessments often lack a solid understanding about the actual processes of public policy in the Pacific islands. Prevailing theories of public policy have remained largely westernised, and lenses to development primarily ethnocentric. Accordingly, this study’s findings shed light on the strengths and limitations of current public policy and development scholarships evident from Pacific public policy experiences. There are five key findings: First, policy processes have remained heavily top-down, shaped significantly by political and external interests, and where society has been the neglected element. In essence, the genesis of public policy has been insufficiently rooted in the context, problems and needs to which policies have been directed. This constitutes a significant democratic and development deficit that must be addressed in ongoing public policy development. Second, the use of evidence-based policy has been limited. While existing formal policies were often those transferred from elsewhere, and which do not fit well in the receiving context and culture, the practices were ad hoc, driven by various ideological or social constructions. Third, the success of policy and its implementation depends on mutually reinforcing factors of policy culture and stakeholder support, capability, implementation modality and leadership. These factors are critical for ensuring that participation, partnership, ownership, understanding and learning are built into policy processes. Fourth, the integration of these elements into ongoing public policy development of Pacific island countries and the region requires a fundamental shift of focus about the role of society, particularly the adaptive capability of indigenous systems to legitimise notions of public policy in state-society relationships. Fifth, following a meta-analysis and synthesis of the four (country) case studies, the overall findings are conceptualised into a (explanatory) model of public policy. This model is a heuristic one that could be used when thinking about adopting and designing public policies in the Pacific islands capable of effective implementation. The model could be applied to non-Pacific small island developing states. Finally, the model provides a framework for discussing the normative implications of this study’s findings for public policy and development theory, practice and needed future research, and yielded five broad recommendations for future improvement: (1) the centrality of context; (2) societal needs incorporated into the public policy space; (3) focus on the political dimensions of further reforms; (4) international support that is more appreciative of context; and (5) needed changes to the way in which we think about development public policy.</p>

Public policy processes in the Pacific islands: A study of policy initiation, formulation and implementation in Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Samoa and regional inter-governmental organisations

<p>This thesis examines the manner in which public policies are initiated, formulated and implemented in Pacific island countries and regional organisations, and determines the factors which are most critical for their effective implementation. It employs narrative inquiry and grounded theory approaches, supported by the computer software Nvivo, to data collection and analysis of case studies from Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Samoa, and key regional inter-governmental organisations. 128 semi-structured interviews were drawn from ten policy cases (three for each of the Pacific island countries and one from the Region’s Pacific Plan), together with a general narrative of the policy environment spread across all four contexts. A social constructionism worldview allows for the grounding of the research and its findings for both subject and context of the study. Participant voices are utilised as rich descriptions of policy processes, triangulation provided by documentary analyses and participant observation. Motivating this inquiry was my observation of the lack of visibly significant improvements in service delivery in Samoa and other Pacific island countries. These perceptions echoed criticisms in the literature about the slow improvement of development performance across the region despite high levels of foreign aid. Yet, such assessments often lack a solid understanding about the actual processes of public policy in the Pacific islands. Prevailing theories of public policy have remained largely westernised, and lenses to development primarily ethnocentric. Accordingly, this study’s findings shed light on the strengths and limitations of current public policy and development scholarships evident from Pacific public policy experiences. There are five key findings: First, policy processes have remained heavily top-down, shaped significantly by political and external interests, and where society has been the neglected element. In essence, the genesis of public policy has been insufficiently rooted in the context, problems and needs to which policies have been directed. This constitutes a significant democratic and development deficit that must be addressed in ongoing public policy development. Second, the use of evidence-based policy has been limited. While existing formal policies were often those transferred from elsewhere, and which do not fit well in the receiving context and culture, the practices were ad hoc, driven by various ideological or social constructions. Third, the success of policy and its implementation depends on mutually reinforcing factors of policy culture and stakeholder support, capability, implementation modality and leadership. These factors are critical for ensuring that participation, partnership, ownership, understanding and learning are built into policy processes. Fourth, the integration of these elements into ongoing public policy development of Pacific island countries and the region requires a fundamental shift of focus about the role of society, particularly the adaptive capability of indigenous systems to legitimise notions of public policy in state-society relationships. Fifth, following a meta-analysis and synthesis of the four (country) case studies, the overall findings are conceptualised into a (explanatory) model of public policy. This model is a heuristic one that could be used when thinking about adopting and designing public policies in the Pacific islands capable of effective implementation. The model could be applied to non-Pacific small island developing states. Finally, the model provides a framework for discussing the normative implications of this study’s findings for public policy and development theory, practice and needed future research, and yielded five broad recommendations for future improvement: (1) the centrality of context; (2) societal needs incorporated into the public policy space; (3) focus on the political dimensions of further reforms; (4) international support that is more appreciative of context; and (5) needed changes to the way in which we think about development public policy.</p>

Integrating Renewable Energy in Pacific Island Countries

<p>The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the entry of renewable energy technologies into Pacific Islands' electricity markets, with particular focus on a new technology: the Pelamis, a wave energy converter. Pacific Islands are endowed with various types of renewable energy resources, yet they remain highly dependent on expensive fuel imports for their energy requirements, using little renewable energy. This paradox is investigated by studying the characteristics of Pacific Islands' electricity markets, including a case study on the entry of a new renewable energy technology, the Pelamis, into the electricity market of Hawaii. The integration of renewable energy technologies into Pacific Islands' electricity systems is then analysed from the point of view of an energy planner. The recent application of portfolio analysis to energy planning has provided a new framework to evaluate the different electricity generating options available to energy planners. Taking both the generating cost and financial risk of each technology into account, portfolio theory has been applied to various European countries, by comparing actual generation portfolios to an efficient frontier showing the trade-off between energy security and the cost of electricity generation. This framework has clear relevance to Pacific Island Countries. However, the characteristics inherent to Pacific Island Countries have important implications on the operation of their electricity systems, which are not necessarily taken into account in portfolio analysis. In particular, geographical isolation inhibits these countries from connecting to larger intercontinental grids, which emphasizes the importance of reliability of supply. This thesis presents a mathematical model which establishes a method for computing an optimal intertemporal path for introducing renewable energy into a pre-existing electricity system. The model explicitly allows for the cost of maintaining reliability of supply as intermittent generators are integrated. The framework also incorporates concepts from Integrated Resource Planning and portfolio analysis. Finally, policies for accelerating renewable energy development are reviewed, and a discussion is provided on the policies which are likely to be most suitable to Pacific Islands. One of the main conclusions of this thesis is that the amount of backup capacity for renewable energy can be optimally minimized by diversifying the mix of renewable energy resources in each island. In practice, this would require studying the complementarities and loading curves of the various renewable resources available, and comparing their total potential production, and the variability of this production, to electricity demand. This would allow energy planners to model the inclusion of a maximum amount of renewable energy using a minimum of backup capacity to maintain system reliability, potentially leading to a more efficient implementation and formulation of policies aimed at developing renewable energy generation in Pacific Islands.</p>