Food and nutrition security in Solomon Islands

This report is a literature review on Food and Nutrition Security in Solomon Islands, based on data from surveys conducted by Solomon Islands National Statistical Office, as well as from national and international organizations working in Solomon Islands. The purpose of the report is to present information outlining the current food and nutrition situation in Solomon Islands before implementation of the CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems (AAS), led by WorldFish. The aim of the AAS program is to enhance production in natural freshwater and/or coastal ecosystems to improve household livelihood, including income and food security. This report summarizes national statistics and also focuses in more detail on a subset of provinces: Guadalcanal, Malaita and Western. In 2012, the AAS program was rolled out in Guadalcanal, Central and Malaita Provinces, designated the Central Hub. In 2013, roll out is beginning in the Western Hub (Western and Isabel Provinces). The priority province for the Central Hub has been identified as Malaita

Solomon Islands national situation analysis

The CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems (CRP AAS) was approved by the CGIAR Fund Council in July, 2011. Solomon Islands, one of five countries targeted by the program, began its rollout with a five month planning phase between August and December of 2011. Subsequent steps of the Program rollout include scoping, diagnosis and design. This report is the first to be produced during the scoping phase in Solomon Islands; it addresses the national setting and provides basic information on the context within which the AAS Program will operate. The macro level subjects of analysis provide initial baselines of national level indicators, policy context, power relationships and other factors relevant to the Program

Solomon Islands: Malaita Hub scoping report

The CGIAR Research Program (CRP) Aquatic Agricultural Systems (AAS) will target five countries, including Solomon Islands. The proposed hubs for Solomon Islands were to cover most provinces, referencing the Western, Central and Eastern regions. Scoping of the initial ‘Central’ hub was undertaken in Guadalcanal, Malaita and Central Islands provinces and this report details findings from all three. As scoping progressed however, it was agreed that, based on the AAS context and priority needs of each province and the Program’s capacity for full implementation, the Central Hub would be restricted to Malaita Province only and renamed “Malaita Hub”. Consistent in each AAS country, there are four steps in the program rollout: planning, scoping, diagnosis and design. Rollout of the Program in Solomon Islands began with a five month planning phase between August and December 2011, and scoping of the first hub began in January 2012. This report, the second to be produced during rollout, describes the findings from the scoping process between January and June 2012. This report marks the transition from the scoping phase to the diagnosis phase in which output from scoping was used to develop a hub level theory of change for identifying research opportunities. Subsequent reports detail in-depth analyses of gender, governance, nutrition and partner activities and discuss Program engagement with community members to identify grass-roots demand for research

Solomon Islands Aquatic Agricultural Systems Program design document

WorldFish is leading the CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems together with two other CGIAR Centers; the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and Bioversity. In 2012 and 2013 the AAS Program rolled out in Solomon Islands, Zambia, Bangladesh, Cambodia and the Philippines. Aquatic Agricultural Systems are places where farming and fishing in freshwater and/or coastal ecosystems contribute significantly to household income and food security. The program goal is to improve the well-being of AAS-dependent people. A hub is a geographic location that provides a focus for learning, innovation and impact through participatory action research. In Solomon Islands AAS works in Malaita Hub (Malaita Province) and Western Hub (Western Province). In each hub we identify a ‘Development Challenge’ that the Program will address to give us focus and motivation

S-Duality at the Black Hole Threshold in Gravitational Collapse

We study gravitational collapse of the axion/dilaton field in classical low energy string theory, at the threshold for black hole formation. A new critical solution is derived that is spherically symmetric and continuously self-similar. The universal scaling and echoing behavior discovered by Choptuik in gravitational collapse appear in a somewhat different form. In particular, echoing takes the form of SL(2,R) rotations (cf. S-duality). The collapse leaves behind an outgoing pulse of axion/dilaton radiation, with nearly but not exactly flat spacetime within it.Comment: 8 pages of LaTeX, uses style "revtex"; 1 figure, available in archive, or at ftp://ftp.itp.ucsb.edu/figures/nsf-itp-95-15.ep

Towards integrated island management: lessons from Lau, Malaita, for the implementation of a national approach to resource management in Solomon Islands

Solomon Islands has recently developed substantial policy aiming to support inshore fisheries management, conservation, climate change adaptation and ecosystem approaches to resource management. A large body of experience in community based approaches to management has developed but ôupscalingö and particularly the implementation of nation-wide approaches has received little attention so far. With the emerging challenges posed by climate change and the need for ecosystem wide and integrated approaches attracting serious donor attention, a national debate on the most effective approaches to implementation is urgently needed. This report discusses potential implementation of ôa cost-effective and integrated approach to resource management that is consistent with national policy and needsö based on a review of current policy and institutional structures and examination of a recent case study from Lau, Malaita using stakeholder, transaction and financial cost analyses.Resource management, Policies, Fishery management, Conservation, Environment management, ISEW, Pacific, Solomon Is., Malaita I.,

Solomon Islands: Essential aspects of governance for Aquatic Agricultural Systems in Malaita Hub

In late 2012, a governance assessment was carried out as part of the diagnosis phase of rollout of the CGIAR Aquatic Agricultural Systems Program in Malaita Hub in Solomon Islands. The purpose of the assessment was to identify and provide a basic understanding of essential aspects of governance related to Aquatic Agricultural Systems in general, and more specifically as a case study in natural resource management. The underlying principles of the approach we have taken are drawn from an approach known as “Collaborating for Resilience” (CORE), which is based on bringing all key stakeholders into a process to ensure that multiple perspectives are represented (a listening phase), that local actors have opportunities to influence each other’s understanding (a dialogue phase), and that ultimately commitments to action are built (a choice phase) that would not be possible through an outsider’s analysis alone. This report begins to address governance from an AAS perspective, using input from AAS households and other networked stakeholders. We attempt to summarize governance issues that are found not only within the community but also, and especially, those that are beyond the local level, both of which may need to be addressed by the AAS program

Foods and diets of communities involved in inland aquaculture in Malaita Province, Solomon Islands

Solomon Islands has a population of just over half a million people, most of whom are rural-based subsistence farmers and fishers who rely heavily on fish as their main animal-source food and for income. The nation is one of the Pacific Island Counties and Territories; future shortfalls in fish production are projected to be serious, and government policy identifies inland aquaculture development as one of the options to meet future demand for fish. In Solomon Islands, inland aquaculture has also been identified as a way to improve ood and nutrition security for people with poor access to marine fish. This report undertaken by a Worldfish study under the CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems explores the e potential role of land-based aquaculture of Mozambique tilapia in Solomon Islands as it relates to household food and nutrition security. This nutrition survey aimed to benchmark the foods and diets of households newly involved in small homestead tilapia ponds and their neighboring households in the central region of Malaita, the most populous island of all the provinces in Solomon Islands. Focus group discussions and semistructured interviews were employed in 10 communities (five inland and five coastal), four clinics, and five schools

More on core instabilities of magnetic monopoles

In this paper we present new results on the core instability of the 't Hooft Polyakov monopoles we reported on before. This instability, where the spherical core decays in a toroidal one, typically occurs in models in which charge conjugation is gauged. In this paper we also discuss a third conceivable configuration denoted as ``split core'', which brings us to some details of the numerical methods we employed. We argue that a core instability of 't Hooft Polyakov type monopoles is quite a generic feature of models with charged Higgs particles.Comment: Latex, 15 pages, 6 figures; published versio

QCD Strings as Constrained Grassmannian Sigma Model:

We present calculations for the effective action of string world sheet in R3 and R4 utilizing its correspondence with the constrained Grassmannian sigma model. Minimal surfaces describe the dynamics of open strings while harmonic surfaces describe that of closed strings. The one-loop effective action for these are calculated with instanton and anti-instanton background, reprsenting N-string interactions at the tree level. The effective action is found to be the partition function of a classical modified Coulomb gas in the confining phase, with a dynamically generated mass gap.Comment: 22 pages, Preprint: SFU HEP-116-9