Building peace in Bougainville: measuring recovery post-conflict

Description: This discussion paper documents the socio-economic status of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville and the extent of rebound in investment and access to services since the cessation of conflict there in 1997. Data on the level of income, the age profile of the population, the level of access to basic services, and levels of investment in residential housing were collected via a household-level survey that was administered in the four major urban centres. Analysis of these data shows that per capita income has rebounded to 40 per cent of the pre-conflict level; approximately half of the population is aged less than 20 years; and one-third of school age children are not attending school. These observations have value in assessing the extent of economic recovery following the installation of peace and the levels of public investment required for improving access to basic services

50/50 by 2020: poverty and redistributive politics in post-independence Fiji

The affirmative action program launched by the Fiji Government in 2002 espoused a '50/50 by 2020' vision; that is, by the year 2020, some 50 per cent of all economic activities would be owned by the indigenous population. The surprising impact of this heavy-handed redistribution of income and wealth from the non-indigenous to the indigenous population has been poverty-raising. One in eight in the population lived in poverty in 1977, the figure had risen to one in four by 1990/91 and one in three by 2002/2003; and on current trends, would reach one in two (that is 50 per cent) by 2020. Such an outcome would be a direct consequence of these redistributive policies. While the politics of redistribution may have been compelling, its economic costs, including the impact on poverty, are devastating. The 2006 military takeover was executed to rid the country of corruption and race-based politics. Achieving these goals may have a bonus in terms of reversing the rise in poverty. Only time will tell

SAARC Agricultural Vision 2020

This paper has visualized how agricultural scenario would evolve in the near future and what policies and strategies would be appropriate to adjust to the emerging changes and to harness the new opportunities. The major challenges for agriculture in the region are: raising and sustaining agricultural growth; ensuring food and nutritional security; facing impact of climate change; adjusting to changes in energy scenario; maintaining biosafety and bio-security; make sustainable use of natural resources and protecting biodiversity. The new opportunities lie in trade, marketing, biotechnology, shifting demand preferences in domestic and overseas markets, technology sharing, resource sharing and investments in research, extension and infrastructural development. SAARC countries need to develop science-based strategies for collective response to challenges and opportunities and global shocks in agriculture.Agricultural and Food Policy,

Who receives Australian aid and Why?

The bulk of official development assistance (ODA) from Australia is provided to Asia and Oceania. Indonesia and Papua New Guinea together account for nearly a quarter of the total. Physical proximity to Canberra and large receipts of bilateral aid from the United States is a significant determinant of who receives this aid. The level of poverty is (statistically) a significant determinant of aid allocated by Canberra only after recipients have been chosen.aid

International Trade, Food Security and the Response to the WTO in South Asian Countries

trade liberalization, WTO, food security, imports, self-sufficiency, subsidies, OECD, agriculture, price volality

An ordered framework for partial multivalued functors

The category Rel of sets and relations intimately ties the notions of function, partial multivalued function, and direct image under a function through the description of Rel as the Kleisli category of the covariant power set functor on Set. We present a suitable framework to obtain a similar relationship between the concepts of functor, partial multivalued functor, and the direct image under a functor.Comment: Accepted for presentation at the Asia-Pacific World Congress on Computer Science and Engineering 2015, Fij