Changing Climates

Few things hinder the prospect of meeting global adaptation needs more than aid politics. After working in the south pacific for more than 2 month, I have already concluded that we will not be able to create a real adaptation agenda unless we agree to separate what is necessary from what gets thrown in aid packages to appease political urges. The ineffective allocation of aid is not only a problem of donors, but also a sign of incompetent governance.
Governance in small island states is strange; governance systems
here are supposed to imitate a system from far away, a system designed for a different economic, environmental, and social context, a system inherited from the colonial time that hardly makes through an electoral cycle. Within that reality, development, aid, and adaptation priorities get mixed into the same mix, and the national agenda becomes whatever feels right the morning of drafting development programmes and plans.
Perhaps, before even thinking projects, outputs, outcomes, and indicators, we should reconsider the political system in which all of development aid is being created. It seems odd that with the thousands of ethnic groups and languages we have in our planet, we have to stick to one model of democratic governance.
The meaning of democracy should be shaped by the people, not by a law.