Overstating the case against the Pacific development paradigm

I must confess to having some sympathy with Helen Hughes’ scathing critique of development in the South Pacific, but she goes too far, surely. For example, with reference to one of the Millennium Goals, she says that

“The ending of hunger” amounts to a stock diet of sago and stringy sweet potato. Population pressure, plus the erosion of hunting, has led to a decline in nutrition.

However, even in such undeniably poor and troubled places as the Weather Coast of Guadalcanal people eat several root and tuber crops, bananas and a range of indigenous vegetables. There certainly are nutritional problems in the Pacific. Rising rates of diabetes and heart disease are testament to that. But the modernization and homogenization of diets are to blame, not “sago and stringy sweet potato.” If anything, it will be work on those very same sweet potatoes so disparaged by Hughes that will end hunger in many parts of the Pacific.

And to suggest that oil palm cultivation is some sort of panacea is disingenuous at best. Finally, I’m no expert on the cultures of Papua New Guinea, but this parting shot

…why is it that after a decade of implementation of the Millennium Goals, backed by billions of taxpayers’ dollars, women in PNG villages choose to breastfeed piglets because pigs are more valuable than children?

sounds like a straw man to me.