1,978 research outputs found
Labour mobility and diaspora: An overview of Solomon Islands’ historical regulatory experience, 1850s-2013
No full textWith less than 4,500 of its population of around 600,000 living overseas in 2013, the Solomon Islands ranks 138th in the world for diaspora formation. At these levels the scale of the diaspora as a proportion of population (0.8 percent) remains lower than it was in the early 20th century, when more than 5,000 Solomon islanders were compulsorily repatriated from Queensland under early Australian Commonwealth legislation. This working paper retraces and reframes the history of Solomon Islands labour mobility and diaspora formation since the 1850s, considering it in relation to the wider institutional and macro-regulatory machineries of three phases or regimes of economic, trade and mobility regulation. These regimes are referred to in this paper as: 1.liberal imperial, 2. national territorial and 3. International neoliberal. We argue that Solomon Islanders’ participation in labour mobility has been substantial under all three phases, but that international mobility and diaspora formation only developed significantly under the liberal imperial regime. Even then, however, its development proved precarious. The ways regional actors and governments acting within the different regimes have framed and segmented labour markets continue to powerfully shape mobility and diaspora outcomes. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the situation to date for future economic development and security in Solomon Islands
Making sense of health education in the Solomon Islands.
No full textThis article explores both the process and outcomes of a working Partnership between Solomon Islands College for Higher Education and the University of Waikato that explored the development of the initial teacher education health education courses. Through a process of co-construction and inquiry, teacher educators from the Solomon Islands and New Zealand developed a metaphorical context-specific model to represent understandings of health education in the Solomon Islands. The model and what this has meant for teaching and learning in health education at both SOE and in schools is examined
Diversification Strategies and Adaptation Deficit: Evidence from Rural Communities in Niger
No full textThe paper provides fresh empirical evidence on the adaptation process in Niger rural communities using original longitudinal socio-economic panel data merged with granular geo-referenced climatic information. We identify the main drivers and impacts of crop and labor diversification which constitute two livelihood strategies on moderating the adaptation deficit. In doing so, we account for the interdependence between the two diversification practices and potential reverse causality between welfare outcomes and diversification behavior. Moreover, we condition the impacts of diversification on different sections of the welfare distribution to capture potential non-linear effects. Our results reveal that the diversification has positive and significant welfare impacts when most vulnerable households rely on it as an adaptation strategy to mid-run climate variability and as a coping strategy to short-run market shocks. At the same time, our results find lower but still positive impacts for well-endowed households that are likely to diversify their activity portfolio. Given the very limited presence of policy support, we conclude that the rural Nigerien communities are characterized by a large and autonomous adaptation response which constitutes a key leverage mechanism for policy makers. We thus suggest government interventions aimed at supporting the most important diversification drivers, but also aimed at straightening some channels, such as network infrastructures or the promotion of local crop varieties, which may have a greater potential in triggering diversification
Climate Resilience Pathways of Rural Households. Evidence from Ethiopia
No full textThis paper explores the resilience capacity of rural Ethiopian households after the drought shock
occurred in 2011. The work develops an original empirical framework able to capture the policy and
socio-economic determinants of households’ resilience capacity by making parametric statistical
assumption on the resilience distribution. To this end, the analysis employs a two-wave
representative panel dataset aligned with detailed weather records while controlling for a large set
of household- and community-level characteristics. The analysis shows that the majority of these
factors affects significantly resilience capacity only in the group of households affected by the
drought shock, suggesting that the observed effect relates to the adaptive capacity enabled by
these factors, rather than a simple welfare effect. Three policy indications emerge from the findings
of the empirical model. First, government support programmes, such as the PSNP, appear to
sustain households’ resilience by helping them to reach the level of pre-shock total consumption,
but have no impact on the food-consumption resilience. Secondly, the “selling out assets strategy”
affects positively on households’ resilience, but only in terms of food consumption. Finally, the
presence of informal institutions, such as social networks providing financial support, sharply
increases households’ resilience by helping them to reach pre-shock levels of food and total
consumption. Policies incentivizing the formation of these networks, through the participation of
households to agricultural cooperative, agricultural associations, or community projects, may also
help farmers in recovering their wealth level after a weather shoc
Funds of knowledge: Developing a Diploma in Teaching in Early Childhood Education in the Solomon Islands.
No full textThis article discusses how three early childhood teacher educators, from the Solomon Islands College of Higher Education School of Education and the University of Waikato Faculty of Education, worked in partnership together and with others to develop a new Diploma in Teaching Early Childhood Education (ECE) for the Solomon Islands. We argue that the knowledge and understandings that we shared about New Zealand early childhood education and its bicultural curriculum Te Whāriki made our task easier from the outset. So too did our shared "funds of knowledge" and expertise, particularly the Solomon Islands women's indigenous knowledge and abilities to reflect on teaching and learning in their nation and New Zealand, two contexts they understood well. As we worked through a range of issues related to the development and delivery of courses, the primacy of relationships and historical, cultural and social contexts for learning were reinforced. Broad understandings of relevant education pedagogy for adults and young children were incorporated through the diploma development process. The result was a new Diploma in Teaching Early Childhood Education and new ways of teaching and learning embedded in Solomon Islands contexts, blending the best of local and imported knowledge. This article adds to a small body of literature related to ECE in the Solomon Islands and the Pacific region
Improving the efficiency targeting of Malawi's farm input subsidy programme: Big pain, small gain?
No full textThe Farm Input Subsidy Programme (FISP) in Malawi was introduced in the 2005/2006 season against a background of bad weather affecting production and prolonged food shortages. Vouchers are distributed empowering eligible farmers to exchange them for fixed quantities of inputs at subsidized prices. Since its inception, there has been a debate at national level about whether the FISP's potential has been fully exploited, with policy makers exploring options to improve the programme. Proposals include targeting efficient and productive farmers to maximize returns. In this paper, we evaluate the effectiveness of these proposed changes to the existing FISP design by utilizing two waves of the LSMS-ISA survey merged with climatic data. We estimate how the national demand for agricultural inputs varies according to a variation in the targeting criteria by means of a two-stage demand system. Then, we identify more efficient farmers by means of a stochastic frontier approach. We observe a mismatch between voucher recipients and efficiency, with approximately 60% of vouchers being allocated to the three bottom quintiles of efficiency. This mismatch is observed also at the spatial level with more vouchers going to districts characterized by less efficient production. While concerns on the distributional impacts of the new criteria are discussed together with some suggestions for spatially diversifying the structuring of the policy and incentivizing crop diversification, our results highlight a high substitutability of commercial with subsidized inputs by new eligible farmers. Consequently, simulating the targeting policy variation we obtain an outcome that would lead only to a limited increases in predicted food expenditure ranging from 0.27% to 0.8% and maize production from 0.2% to 1.3. Scope for analysing different adjustments in the functioning of FISP are, thus, proposed to policy makers
Australia's costly investment in Solomon Islands: the lessons of RAMSI
No full textSummary
In this Analysis Lowy Institute Melanesia Program Director, Jenny Hayward-Jones, argues that Australia’s massive expenditure of 2.6 billion on the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands over ten years was a high price to pay for stability in a country of 500,000 people.
The RAMSI experience showed the value of integrating Australia’s foreign, economic, aid and security policies and just as importantly of working with Pacific island partners in the region.
Large-scale missions like RAMSI would benefit from clearly defined exit strategies and rigorous assessment of performance in order to control costs and maximise impact
The Solomon Islands School of Education Partnership: Aspirations, context and design in educational change.
No full textThis article provides a background and context for a project that linked the School of Education in Solomon Islands College of Higher Education (SOE) with an external partner to work together on institutional and educational change. The four and a half year Partnership was funded by the New Zealand Aid Programmei. Pre-service teacher education in Solomon Islands is mainly provided by the School of Education. For a number of years the school has faced many challenges in its attempt to offer quality pre-service teacher education. Some challenges were external, such as political instability and ethnic unrest, and some were internal, such as a need to address the school's aims, design of programmes, quality of teaching, learning and assessment and the professional development of academic staff. We explain how the partnership responded to challenges and evolved in a way that recognised the input of the School of Education staff and avoided the imposition of solutions by the external partner. The major aspirations and intentions of the Partnership are described along with indications of positive changes that led to an extension of the project. A major change in the school was the inclusion of a teacher education programme for some of the many untrained practising teachers in the Solomon Islands. It is pointed out, however, that there were risks and challenges that faced the Partnership over its duration. Some were outside the control of the partners and others could be addressed and improvements made, especially within the school using a collaborative approach. It is argued that issues remain and further impetus is needed to effect more lasting change
Sustaining organisational change: Teacher education in the Solomon Islands.
No full text"Sustainability is the capacity of education reform initiatives to continue" (Webster, Silova, Moyer, & McAllister, 2011, para. 12). In this article we reflect upon the process of organisational strengthening that was a key component of the Partnership between the Faculty of Education at the University of Waikato and the School of Education, Solomon Islands College of Higher Education. We argue that within the New Zealand Aid Programmei funded partnership, the building of mutually respectful relationships, building leadership capacity and the respect for and inclusion of indigenous cultural considerations were key to the organisational change process and its sustainability
- …
