New look aid strategy for Pacific

AT the beginning of June, the United Nations Development Programme, which coordinates UN aid activities, is hosting an aid summit meeting in Noumea to thrash out the details of the next five years’ aid strategy for the region. Timed to follow the South Pacific Commission AGM, the meeting will bring together donor agencies and governments, officers of 15 South Pacific Nations, regional organis ations, and the French territorial gov ernments, to discuss means of making aid strategy more relevant to the distinc tive nature of the region’s island.

The UNDP officer responsible, Natsuki Hiratsuka, explained to PIM that UNDP wanted the gathering to be more “recipient-driven” than in the past, and it was hoped that the governments would play a much more active role in working out what they felt was needed and appropriate. He said that UNDP was suggesting four main themes for future aid programmes in the region. • Poverty Alleviation and Human Development. “There is serious poverty in the region, especially in the remote islands,” he said, and so UNDP wants to concentrate on education, health, and

supporting small enterprises and organ isations, which could be the most appro priate forms of economic activity for the islands. • Environment and Natural Re sources, which is clearly of major import ance to the region. • Economic and Financial Manage ment and Reform. “Our approach may be slightly different from the World Bank’s we would like more emphasis on Human Development,” Hiratsuka says. UNDP is suggesting concentrating aid programmes on policy and manage

ment training.

“We would possibly advocate more strategic planning, more appropriate to small islands”, he says. “We want a roundtable approach in which the gov ernments themselves do more prioritising of their development plans”. • Interregional Cooperation in sec tors such as transport, telecommunica tions and measures for better prepared ness against disasters.

In the light of recent warnings from international bodies about the dangers of aid dependency for South Pacific islands, there is some serious talking to be done.

Recipient countries will be expected to sing for their supper! □