Suchergebnisse

In many low and middle income countries, dismal failures in the quality of public service delivery such as absenteeism among teachers and doctors and leakages of public funds have driven the agenda for better governance and accountability. This has raised interest in the idea that citizens can contribute to improved quality of service delivery by holding policy-makers and providers of services accountable. This proposition is particularly resonant when it comes to the human development sectors - health, education and social protection - which involve close interactions between providers and ci

The Kamagayan Comprehensive Care Center (KC3) clients report being very satisfied with the comprehensive package of health services offered under the BCP and they feel welcome and accepted at the KC3. Community members in Kamagayan, including family members of the KC3 clients, also praise the service as an excellent intervention. Virtually all key stakeholders interviewed noted that the KC3 team had performed especially well in building trust between clients and their health service providers, families, and community. In that sense, community-based advocacy efforts were successful at generating an enabling environment for service delivery. The KC3 clients, family members, and community representatives also appreciated efforts from the KC3 team to promote demand reduction through counseling, Narcotics Anonymous (NA) sessions, and privileged access to the Argao Treatment and Rehabilitation Center (TRC). There is great demand and genuine interest among the KC3 clients and patients' clients to become peer educators and provide support to PWID. The professionalization of PWID through peer educator roles has also reportedly reduced stigma and discrimination and increased acceptance of PWID in the community. Should services for PWID be scaled up in Cebu and beyond, recruiting a workforce of peer educators should not be a critical challenge, an important lesson learned for future harm reduction projects in the Philippines.

This is a handbook designed to guide governments, public authorities and other interested stakeholders in the process of designing and tendering sustainable Public-Private Partnership (PPP) arrangements in the irrigation sector. It takes a practical, step-by-step approach in describing what a government needs to do in preparing and implementing a PPP irrigation scheme from inception. The handbook takes account of the various stages of the irrigation value chain and how to handle private sector participation in irrigation schemes of different sizes and types. It assumes that governments have already made the underlying policy decision to embark on a PPP in irrigation, and therefore does not dwell on the rationale for undertaking a PPP. The handbook's practical aspects are contained in four, stand-alone chapters that follow an over-arching Executive Summary and an Introduction. The chapters are deliberately numbered to coincide with the four steps that a government should take in establishing an irrigation PPP: Preparation, Structuring, Procurement Management, and Implementation. In addition, each chapter concludes with a practical Checklist to help executives keep track of the necessary tasks in each step on the way to establishing a sustainable PPP operation. The chapters are designed to be read as stand-alone guides, out of an understanding that institutions using the book may already have completed prior steps. Nevertheless, it would be prudent for users to acquaint themselves with the entire handbook so as to develop a holistic view of the requirements for a full PPP project. Chapter One: Preparation is divided into two parts, A and B (each with its own concluding Checklist). Part A reviews the scope for introducing PPPs into the irrigation sector, identifying the issues that policymakers should consider from the outset in order to make the private sector's involvement feasible with a specific irrigation project.Part B discusses the irrigation as a business. It contains a variety of case studies—the first time such studies have been documented—with discussion of lessons learned, PPP types, transfer of investment functions in developing countries, competitive bidding, and third party involvement among the subjects covered. Chapter Two: Structuring a PPP sets out the various tasks that must be completed to structure a sustainable PPP contract. Chapter Three: Managing Procurement examines how to select a private contractor, which involves such factors as the fiscal commitments to the PPP, to what extent the process should be competitive and how that might be conducted and managed, and what issues are peculiar to PPPs in irrigation.Chapter Four: Implementation highlights management of the contract and establishment of those management structures, monitoring, penalties and grantor's rights, use of performance bonds, enforcement of customer payments, dealing with changes to the contract, and contract expiry and asset handover. The overall structure of the handbook is illustrated below. The handbook is supported by three annexes: Annex 1 explains how to use the Excel Options Assessment Tool, , and Annex 2 provides case studies of 29 existing or emerging irrigation PPPs.

Worldwide, deaths from cancer exceed those caused by human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), tuberculosis, and malaria combined. Seventy percent of deaths due to cancer occur in low-and middle-income countries, which are often poorly prepared to deal with the growing burden of chronic disease. Over a period of 18 months, the cancer care and control South-South knowledge exchange brought together a group of stakeholders from five countries in Africa - Botswana, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zambia to share experiences, lessons, and good practices through a set of video conferences and a site visit to Zambia. All five countries have demonstrated commitment, initiated various cancer control and cancer screening programs, and expressed interest in sharing their experiences. The knowledge exchange on cancer care and control aimed to raise awareness, increase knowledge of effective strategies, and strengthen regional collaboration in cancer control planning and expanding equitable access to cancer treatment. This paper presents highlights of the country experiences shared, common challenges discussed, and innovative solutions explored during the knowledge exchange. Topics addressed include population-based surveillance and data collection to better document the burden of cancer; strategies for designing and implementing successful national cancer care and control programs; innovative approaches for strengthening cancer prevention efforts such as human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccination programs; task sharing and other strategies to build capacity and increase access to services; analytical tools for understanding the costs of programs; financing models, including public private partnerships, to increase cancer prevention and care; policy reforms needed to improve access to palliative care; and opportunities for regional collaboration.

Affordable housing will be instrumental to helping Vietnam achieve its goals for increasing productivity and inclusive urban growth. Since Doi Moi, the country has experienced impressive economic growth, averaged at 7.4 percent per annum from 1990 to 2008, lowering to an average of 6 percent per annum from 2007 to 2013. Strong economic growth has supported a substantial reduction in poverty, from 58 percent in 1993 to 17 percent in 20121. Yet, the country has remained largely rural, with more than half of its population working in the agricultural sector, which only contributed 17 percent of GDP in 20142. In some countries, urbanization has been used as a tool to accelerate economic growth and poverty reduction. As Vietnam aims to maintain a high growth rate, supporting urbanization, where cities contribute a growing share of jobs and GDP, will be an important measure. This structural shift will drive population growth and new demand for housing in cities, for which quality and affordable housing options in well-serviced and connected settlements will be needed. Areas of particular importance in the Law is support toward self-built housing, the active participation of the private sector, addressing the shortage of affordable rental housing as well as high demand for housing from low income groups, especially workers in industrial zones of large cities. This report, which includes a comprehensive assessment and roadmap for affordable housing in Vietnam, recommends the following key messages moving forward: increase investment, Prepare Three Flagship Initiatives under an umbrella National Affordable Housing Program, Institutional Strengthening, Land Tax Reform, and Create an Enabling Environment for Affordable Housing. Moving forward, design of the market-oriented measures described above will require intensive and careful consultation and engagement with all housing sector actors, particularly the private sector. Private sector will need to play an active role in the early preparation to ensure their participation and commitment that carries through to implementation of policy measures on the financing and supply side.

Grenada has faced various socioeconomic challenges within the last decade, including the destruction wrought by Hurricane Ivan in 2004 and the global financial crisis. As a result, economic indicators for Grenada illustrate unfavorable. Increases in the poverty and unemployment rates, especially among the youth and young adults. This report presents an assessment of the regulatory, legislative, and institutional landscape governing workforce development (WfD) in Grenada. The results of this analysis are based on a newly designed analytical tool developed by the World Bank under the Systems Approach for Better Education Results (SABER) initiative. The aim of this initiative is to garner data so as to provide systematic documentation and assessment of the policy and institution factors that influence the performance of education and training systems of SABER-participating countries. The SABER-WfD tool encompasses initial, continuing, and targeted vocational education and training that are offered through multiple channels, and focus largely on programs at the secondary and post-secondary levels. The results of the assessment presented in this report are expected to assist in clarifying priorities. They classify the WfD system according to four stages of maturity in policy and institutional development, as follows: (1) Latent, (2) Emerging, (3) Established, and (4) Advanced.

Integrated Development Plans (IDPs) have been introduced in Romania as a prerequisite for accessing EU funds under the Regional Operational Program (ROP). The IDPs designed for growth poles represent a specific category of strategic planning documents as: 1) they need to be considered within the frame of the national policy to whose implementation they contribute; and 2) they represent a first endeavor to think of development across functional areas rather than confined to the administrative borders of the main cities. The objectives of this report are: i) to carry out a strategic evaluation of the seven IDPs and assess how the current plans compare with the diagnostic of the challenges identified in the work on urban development; and ii) to provide clear recommendations for the improvement of existing IDPs which will contribute to the elaboration of the future generation of plans implemented during the next programming period and will help improve the targeting of investments to enhance their economic impact.

This paper sets out the recent history and evolution of the UK governments' performance measurement, monitoring and management systems from the period since 1997 and the election of the New Labor government, until today. Although, as the paper shows many of the changes the New Labor government introduced were at least partially prefigured in changes introduced in the previous two decades or more. The reason that the period since 1997 is so important is because, it represents the period in which the UK governments' system became almost universal across public activities, including measuring performance at the highest levels of government itself. The core of the performance policies developed by government over this period have been the Public Service Agreements (PSAs) promulgated since 1998, of which there have now been five rounds (1998; 2000; 2002; 2004; 2007). Whilst PSAs are not the only performance policies, or measurement, monitoring and reporting systems, they have come to be seen as the pinnacle of the whole system and, in intention at least, driving developments throughout the public services. The paper will cover only the UK government. Over the past decade significant constitutional changes have devolved some central government powers to first the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly, and then more recently the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Using data from Vietnam, this article describes several types of analysis that can be conducted before launching a major downsizing operation to identify possible gender effects. It draws several conclusions about Vietnam s downsizing reforms. First, although women s prospects of obtaining salaried jobs following displacement from state-owned enterprise worsened as a result of recent reforms, they are likely to improve in the near future. Second, reforms are associated with a sharp decline in the gender gap in earnings, both in and outside the state sector. Third, overstaffing is greatest in sectors in which most employees are men, such as construction, mining, and transportation; it is much less prevalent in sectors in which women dominate the work force, such as footwear, textiles, and garments. Fourth, training, and assistance programs to help redundant workers reveal no evidence of strong gender bias. Fifth, severance packages based on a multiple of earnings are more favorable to men, whereas lump sum packages favor women.

On 2017 August 17 a binary neutron star coalescence candidate (later designated GW170817) with merger time 12:41:04 UTC was observed through gravitational waves by the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors. The Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor independently detected a gamma-ray burst (GRB 170817A) with a time delay of similar to 1.7 s with respect to the merger time. From the gravitational-wave signal, the source was initially localized to a sky region of 31 deg(2) at a luminosity distance of 40(-8)(+8) Mpc and with component masses consistent with neutron stars. The component masses were later measured to be in the range 0.86 to 2.26 M-circle dot. An extensive observing campaign was launched across the electromagnetic spectrum leading to the discovery of a bright optical transient (SSS17a, now with the IAU identification of AT 2017gfo) in NGC 4993 (at similar to 40 Mpc) less than 11 hours after the merger by the One-Meter, Two Hemisphere (1M2H) team using the 1 m Swope Telescope. The optical transient was independently detected by multiple teams within an hour. Subsequent observations targeted the object and its environment. Early ultraviolet observations revealed a blue transient that faded within 48 hours. Optical and infrared observations showed a redward evolution over similar to 10 days. Following early non-detections, X-ray and radio emission were discovered at the transient's position similar to 9 and similar to 16 days, respectively, after the merger. Both the X-ray and radio emission likely arise from a physical process that is distinct from the one that generates the UV/optical/near-infrared emission. No ultra-high-energy gamma-rays and no neutrino candidates consistent with the source were found in follow-up searches. These observations support the hypothesis that GW170817 was produced by the merger of two neutron stars in NGC4993 followed by a short gamma-ray burst (GRB 170817A) and a kilonova/macronova powered by the radioactive decay of r-process nuclei synthesized in the ejecta. ; Kavli Foundation; Danish National Research Foundation; Niels Bohr International Academy; DARK Cosmology Centre; NSF [AST-1518052, AST-141242, AST-1411763, AST-1714498, AST-1517649, PHY-1607291, AST-1412421, AST-1313484]; Gordon AMP; Betty Moore Foundation; Heising-Simons Foundation; Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; David and Lucile Packard Foundation; DNRF; UCMEXUS-CONACYT; NASA - Space Telescope Science Institute [HST-HF-51348.001, HST-HF-51373.001]; NASA [NAS5-26555, NNX15AE50G, NNX16AC22G, NAS5-00136, NNX08AR22G, NNX12AR65G, NNX14AM74G, NNX12AR55G, NNM13AA43C, NNM11AA01A, NNX15AE60G, PF6-170148, PF7-180162]; INAF; INFN; ASI [I/028/12/2]; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), France; Commissariat a l'energie atomique et aux energies alternatives (CEA), France; Commission Europeenne (FEDER), France; Commission Europeenne, France; Institut Universitaire de France (IUF), France; IdEx, France; Sorbonne Paris Cite, France [ANR-10-LABX-0023, ANR-11-IDEX-0005-02]; Labex OCEVU, France [ANR-11-LABX-0060]; A*MIDEX, France [ANR-11-IDEX-0001-02]; Region Ile-de-France (DIM-ACAV), France; Region Alsace (CPER), France; Region Provence-Alpes-Cite d'Azur, France; Departement du Var and Ville de La Seyne-sur-Mer, France; Bundesministerium fur Bildung und Forschung (BMBF), Germany; Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Italy; Nederlandse organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO), the Netherlands; Council of the President of the Russian Federation, Russia; National Authority for Scientific Research (ANCS), Romania; Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad (MINECO): Plan Estatal de Investigacion (MINECO/FEDER), Spain [FPA2015-65150-C3-1-P, FPA2015-65150-C3-2-P, FPA2015-65150-C3-3-P]; Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence and MultiDark Consolider (MINECO), Spain; Prometeo program (Generalitat Valenciana), Spain; Grisolia program (Generalitat Valenciana), Spain; Ministry of Higher Education, Scientific Research and Professional Training, Morocco; National Basic Research Program (973 Program) of China [2013CB834901, 2013CB834900, 2013CB834903]; Chinese Polar Environment Comprehensive Investigation AMP; Assessment Program [CHINARE2016-02-03-05]; Tsinghua University; Nanjing University; Beijing Normal University; University of New South Wales; Texas AM University; Australian Antarctic Division; National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) of Australia; Chinese Academy of Sciences through Center for Astronomical Mega-Science; National Astronomical Observatory of China (NAOC); Argentina-Comision Nacional de Energia Atomica; Agencia Nacional de Promocion Cientifica y Tecnologica (ANPCyT); Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas (CONICET); Gobierno de la Provincia de Mendoza; Municipalidad de Malargue; NDM Holdings and Valle Las Lenas; Australia-the Australian Research Council; Brazil-Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnologico (CNPq); Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos (FINEP); Fundacao de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ); Sao Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) [2010/07359-6, 1999/05404-3]; Ministerio da Ciencia, Tecnologia, Inovacoes e Comunicacoes (MCTIC); Czech Republic [MSMT CR LG15014, LO1305, LM2015038, CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_013/0001402]; France-Centre de Calcul IN2P3/CNRS; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); Conseil Regional Ile-de-France; Departement Physique Nucleaire et Corpusculaire (PNC-IN2P3/CNRS); Departement Sciences de l'Univers (SDU-INSU/CNRS); Institut Lagrange de Paris (ILP) within Investissements d'Avenir Programme [LABEX ANR-10-LABX-63, ANR-11-IDEX-0004-02]; Germany-Bundesministerium fur Bildung und Forschung (BMBF); Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG); Finanzministerium Baden-Wurttemberg; Helmholtz Alliance for Astroparticle Physics (HAP); Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft Deutscher Forschungszentren (HGF); Ministerium fur Innovation, Wissenschaft und Forschung des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen; Ministerium fur Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kunst des Landes Baden-Wurttemberg; Italy-Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN); Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF); Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Universita e della Ricerca (MIUR); CETEMPS Center of Excellence; Ministero degli Affari Esteri (MAE); Mexico-Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia (CONACYT) [167733]; Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM); PAPIIT DGAPA-UNAM; Netherlands - Ministerie van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschap; Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO); Stichting voor Fundamenteel Onderzoek der Materie (FOM); Poland-National Centre for Research and Development [ERA-NET-ASPERA/01/11, ERA-NET-ASPERA/02/11]; National Science Centre [2013/08/M/ST9/00322, 2013/08/M/ST9/00728, HARMONIA 5-2013/10/M/ST9/00062, UMO-2016/22/M/ST9/00198]; Portugal-Portuguese national funds; FEDER within Programa Operacional Factores de Competitividade through Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (COMPETE); Romania-Romanian Authority for Scientific Research ANCS; CNDI-UEFISCDI [20/2012, 194/2012, PN 16 42 01 02]; Slovenia-Slovenian Research Agency; Spain-Comunidad de Madrid; Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER); Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad; Xunta de Galicia; European Community 7th Framework Program [FP7-PEOPLE-2012-IEF-328826]; USA-Department of Energy [DE-AC02-07CH11359, DE-FR02-04ER41300, DE-FG02-99ER41107, DE-SC0011689]; National Science Foundation [0450696]; Grainger Foundation; Marie Curie-IRSES/EPLANET; European Particle Physics Latin American Network; European Union 7th Framework Program [PIRSES-2009-GA-246806]; European Union's Horizon research and innovation programme [646623]; UNESCO; Australian Research Council [FT150100099, FL15010014]; Australian Research Council; Australian Government; Australian Government (NCRIS); Western Australian and Australian Governments; National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy; Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics in 3D (ASTRO 3D) [CE170100013]; Spanish Ministry [AYA 2015-71718-R]; Junta de Andalucia Proyecto de Excelencia [TIC-2839]; National Research Foundation [NRF-2015R1A2A1A01006870, DGE-1144469]; Korea Basic Science Research Program [NRF2014R1A6A3A03057484, NRF-2015R1D1A4A01020961]; Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia (Mexico) through Laboratorios Nacionales Program (Mexico); Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (IAA-CSIC, Spain); Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU, South Korea); Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO) [CE110001020]; ARC LIEF from Australian Research Council [LE130100104]; NASA; ASI; JAXA; MEXT KAKENHI [JP 17H06362, JP26220708, JP17H02901, JP17H06363, JP15H00788, JP24103003, JP10147214, JP10147207]; Chandra X-ray Observatory Center [GO7-18033X]; National Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA) [NAS8-03060]; Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC); Fonds de recherche du Quebec-Nature et Technologies (FRQNT); UKSA; Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR); Indian Space Research Organisation; European Unions Horizon research and innovation programme [653477]; ESO [199.D-0143, 099.D-0376]; DFG [HA 1850/28-1, Kl 766/16-3]; EU/FP7-ERC [291222, 615929, 647208, 725161]; STFC [ST/P000312/1]; ERF [ST/M005348/1, ST/P000495/1]; Marie Sklodowska-Curie [702538]; Polish NCN [OPUS 2015/17/B/ST9/03167]; Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation; California Institute of Technology; Alexander von Humboldt Sofja Kovalevskaja Award; FONDECYT [3160504]; US NSF [AST-1311862]; Quantum Universe I-Core program; Kimmel award; IRC [GOIPG/2017/1525]; Australian Research Council CAASTRO [CE110001020, FT160100028]; Millennium Science Initiative [IC120009]; NASA through Fermi-GBM; Bundesministerium fur Bildung und Forschung (BMBF) via Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft und Raumfahrt (DLR) [50 QV 0301]; Bundesministeriums fur Wirtschaft und Technologie (BMWi) through DLR [50 OG 1101]; Science Foundation Ireland [12/IP/1288]; NASA (United States); DOE (United States); CEA/Irfu (France); IN2P3/CNRS (France); ASI (Italy); INFN (Italy); MEXT (Japan); KEK (Japan); JAXA (Japan); K.A. Wallenberg Foundation; Swedish Research Council; National Space Board (Sweden); INAF (Italy); CNES (France); DOE [DE-AC02-76SF00515]; Office of Naval Research [N00014-07-C0147]; National Science Foundation under University Radio Observatory [AST-1139963, AST-1139974]; ESO Telescopes at the Paranal Observatory [099.D-0382, 099.D-0622, 099.D-0191, 099.D-0116]; REM telescope at the ESO La Silla Observatory [35020]; Department of University and Research (MIUR); Italian Space Agency (ASI); Autonomous Region of Sardinia (RAS); National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF); BIC [114332KYSB20160007]; Hundred Talent Program; Chinese Academy of Sciences [KJZD-EW-M06]; National Natural Science Foundation of China [11673062]; Oversea Talent Program of Yunnan Province; STFC (Science and Technology Facilities Council); Slovenian Research Agency [P1-0188]; Sorbonne Paris Cite [ANR-10-LABX-0023, ANR-11-IDEX-0005-02]; JSPS [15H05437]; JST Consortia; GROWTH (Global Relay of Observatories Watching Transients Happen) - National Science Foundation under PIRE [1545949]; California Institute of Technology (USA); University of Maryland College Park (USA); University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (USA); Texas Tech University (USA); San Diego State University (USA); Los Alamos National Laboratory (USA); Tokyo Institute of Technology (Japan); National Central University (Taiwan); Indian Institute of Astrophysics (India); Inter-University Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics (India); Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel); Oskar Klein Centre at Stockholm University (Sweden); Humboldt University (Germany); Liverpool John Moores University (UK); Planning and Budgeting Committee; Israel Science Foundation; Large Synoptic Survey Telescope Corporation; National Science Foundation CAREER [1455090]; ERC grant TReX; Naval Research Laboratory (NRL); NRL; Oxford Centre for Astrophysical Surveys; Hintze Family Charitable Foundation; Swedish Research Council (V.R.); Israel Science Foundation, Minerva, Israeli ministry of Science; US-Israel Binational Science Foundation; I-CORE of the Planning and Budgeting Committee; Swedish Research Council (VR) [2016 03657 3]; Swedish National Space Board [Dnr. 107/16]; Gravitational Radiation and Electromagnetic Astrophysical Transients (GREAT) - Swedish Research council (V.R.) [Dnr. 2016-06012]; Science and Engineering Research Board, Department of Science and Technology, India; Indo-US Science and Technology Foundation; US National Science Foundation (NSF); US Department of Energy Office of High-Energy Physics; Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program of Los Alamos National Laboratory; Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia (CONACyT), Mexico [271051, 232656, 167281, 260378, 179588, 239762, 254964, 271737, 258865, 243290]; Red HAWC, Mexico; DGAPA-UNAM [RG100414, IN111315, IN111716-3, IA102715, 109916]; VIEP-BUAP; University of Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation; Institute of Geophysics, Planetary Physics, and Signatures at Los Alamos National Laboratory; Polish Science Centre [DEC-2014/13/B/ST9/945]; German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF); Max Planck Society; German Research Foundation (DFG); Alexander von Humboldt Foundation; Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft; French Ministry for Research; CNRS-IN2P3; Astroparticle Interdisciplinary Programme of the CNRS; U.K. Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC); IPNP of the Charles University; Czech Science Foundation; Polish National Science Centre; South African Department of Science and Technology; National Research Foundation; University of Namibia; National Commission on Research, Science and Technology of Namibia (NCRST); Innsbruck University; Austrian Science Fund (FWF); Austrian Federal Ministry for Science, Research and Economy; University of Adelaide; Japan Society for the Promotion of Science; University of Amsterdam; EGI Federation; China National Space Administration (CNSA); Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) [XDB23040400]; Ministry of Science and Technology of China (MOST) [2016YFA0400800]; U.S. National Science Foundation-Office of Polar Programs; U.S. National Science Foundation-Physics Division; Grid Laboratory of Wisconsin (GLOW) grid infrastructure at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Open Science Grid (OSG) grid infrastructure; U.S. Department of Energy; National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center; Louisiana Optical Network Initiative (LONI) grid computing resources; Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada; WestGrid and Compute/Calcul Canada; Swedish Research Council, Sweden; Swedish Polar Research Secretariat, Sweden; Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC), Sweden; Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, Sweden; German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF), Germany; Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), Germany; Helmholtz Alliance for Astroparticle Physics (HAP), Germany; Initiative and Networking Fund of the Helmholtz Association, Germany; Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS-FWO); FWO Odysseus programme; Flanders Institute; Belgian Federal Science Policy Office (Belspo); Marsden Fund, New Zealand; Japan Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS); Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), Switzerland; National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF); Villum Fonden, Denmark; Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF), Denmark; Russian Science Foundation [15-1230015, 14-22-00271]; Science and Education Ministry of Kazakhstan [0075/GF4]; RUSTAVELI [FR/379/6-300/14]; ESA Denmark; ESA France; ESA Germany; ESA Italy; ESA Switzerland; ESA Spain; ESA Russia; ESA USA; CEA; CNES; DLR; ESA; INTA; OSTC; ASI/INAF [2013-025-R.1]; German INTEGRAL through DLR [50 OG 1101]; Spanish MINECO/FEDER [ESP2015-65712-C5-1-R]; RFBR [16-29-13009-ofi-m]; JSPS KAKENHI [JP16H02183, JP15H02075, JP15H02069, JP26800103, JP25800103]; Inter-University Cooperation Program of the MEXT; NINS program; Toyota Foundation [D11-R-0830]; Mitsubishi Foundation; Yamada Science Foundation; Inoue Foundation for Science; National Research Foundation of South Africa; NRF [2017R1A3A3001362]; KASI [2017-1-830-03]; Israel Science Foundation [541/17]; Council of Scientific and Industrial Research of India; Department of Science and Technology, India; Science AMP; Engineering Research Board (SERB), India; Ministry of Human Resource Development, India; Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigacion; Vicepresidencia i Conselleria d'Innovacio Recerca i Turisme; Conselleria d'Educacio i Universitat del Govern de les Illes Balears; Conselleria d'Educacio Investigacio Cultura i Esport de la Generalitat Valenciana; National Science Centre of Poland; Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF); Russian Foundation for Basic Research; Russian Science Foundation; European Commission; European Regional Development Funds (ERDF); Royal Society; Scottish Funding Council; Scottish Universities Physics Alliance; Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA); Lyon Institute of Origins (LIO); National Research, Development and Innovation Office Hungary (NKFI); National Research Foundation of Korea; Industry Canada and Province of Ontario through Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation; Natural Science and Engineering Research Council Canada; Canadian Institute for Advanced Research; Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovations, and Communications; International Center for Theoretical Physics South American Institute for Fundamental Research (ICTP-SAIFR); Council of Hong Kong; National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC); Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS); Ministry of Science and Technology of China (MOST); Leverhulme Trust; Research Corporation; Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), Taiwan; RIKEN; MEXT; KAKENHI [JP 17H06362]; EVN [RP029]; European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme [653477]; ERC [647208]; Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research through NWO VIDI [639.042.612-Nissanke]; NWO TOP [62002444-Nissanke]; VISIR [60.A-9392]; [MOST104-2923-M-008-004-MY5]; [MOST106-2112-M-008-007] ; (1M2H) We thank J. McIver for alerting us to the LVC circular. We thank J. Mulchaey (Carnegie Observatories director), L. Infante (Las Campanas Observatory director), and the entire Las Campanas staff for their extreme dedication, professionalism, and excitement, all of which were critical in the discovery of the first gravitational-wave optical counterpart and its host galaxy as well as the observations used in this study. We thank I. Thompson and the Carnegie Observatory Time Allocation Committee for approving the Swope Supernova Survey and scheduling our program. We thank the University of Copenhagen, DARK Cosmology Centre, and the Niels Bohr International Academy for hosting D.A.C., R.J.F., A.M.B., E.R., and M.R.S. during the discovery of GW170817/SSS17a. R.J.F., A.M.B., and E.R. were participating in the Kavli Summer Program in Astrophysics, "Astrophysics with gravitational wave detections." This program was supported by the the Kavli Foundation, Danish National Research Foundation, the Niels Bohr International Academy, and the DARK Cosmology Centre. The UCSC group is supported in part by NSF grant AST-1518052, the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, generous donations from many individuals through a UCSC Giving Day grant, and from fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (R.J.F.), the David and Lucile Packard Foundation (R.J.F. and E.R.) and the Niels Bohr Professorship from the DNRF (E.R.). AMB acknowledges support from a UCMEXUS-CONACYT Doctoral Fellowship. Support for this work was provided by NASA through Hubble Fellowship grants HST-HF-51348.001 (B.J.S.) and HST-HF-51373.001 (M.R.D.) awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., for NASA, under contract NAS5-26555. This paper includes data gathered with the 1 meter Swope and 6.5 meter Magellan Telescopes located at Las Campanas Observatory, Chile.r (AGILE) The AGILE Team thanks the ASI management, the technical staff at the ASI Malindi ground station, the technical support team at the ASI Space Science Data Center, and the Fucino AGILE Mission Operation Center. AGILE is an ASI space mission developed with programmatic support by INAF and INFN. We acknowledge partial support through the ASI grant No. I/028/12/2. We also thank INAF, Italian Institute of Astrophysics, and ASI, Italian Space Agency.r (ANTARES) The ANTARES Collaboration acknowledges the financial support of: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Commissariat a l'energie atomique et aux energies alternatives (CEA), Commission Europeenne (FEDER fund and Marie Curie Program), Institut Universitaire de France (IUF), IdEx program and UnivEarthS Labex program at Sorbonne Paris Cite (ANR-10-LABX-0023 and ANR-11-IDEX-0005-02), Labex OCEVU (ANR-11-LABX-0060) and the A*MIDEX project (ANR-11-IDEX-0001-02), Region Ile-de-France (DIM-ACAV), Region Alsace (contrat CPER), Region Provence-Alpes-Cite d'Azur, Departement du Var and Ville de La Seyne-sur-Mer, France; Bundesministerium fur Bildung und Forschung (BMBF), Germany; Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Italy; Nederlandse organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO), the Netherlands; Council of the President of the Russian Federation for young scientists and leading scientific schools supporting grants, Russia; National Authority for Scientific Research (ANCS), Romania; Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad (MINECO): Plan Estatal de Investigacion (refs.; r r FPA2015-65150-C3-1-P, -2-P and -3-P; MINECO/FEDER), Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence and MultiDark Consolider (MINECO), and Prometeo and Grisolia programs (Generalitat Valenciana), Spain; Ministry of Higher Education, Scientific Research and Professional Training, Morocco. We also acknowledge the technical support of Ifremer, AIM and Foselev Marine for the sea operation and the CC-IN2P3 for the computing facilities.r (AST3) The AST3 project is supported by the National Basic Research Program (973 Program) of China (Grant Nos. 2013CB834901, 2013CB834900, 2013CB834903), and the Chinese Polar Environment Comprehensive Investigation & Assessment Program (grant No. CHINARE2016-02-03-05). The construction of the AST3 telescopes has received fundings from Tsinghua University, Nanjing University, Beijing Normal University, University of New South Wales, and Texas A&M University, the Australian Antarctic Division, and the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) of Australia. It has also received funding from Chinese Academy of Sciences through the Center for Astronomical Mega-Science and National Astronomical Observatory of China (NAOC).r (Auger) The successful installation, commissioning, and operation of the Pierre Auger Observatory would not have been possible without the strong commitment and effort from the technical and administrative staff in Malargue. We are very grateful to the following agencies and organizations for financial support: Argentina-Comision Nacional de Energia Atomica; Agencia Nacional de Promocion Cientifica y Tecnologica (ANPCyT); Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas (CONICET); Gobierno de la Provincia de Mendoza; Municipalidad de Malargue; NDM Holdings and Valle Las Lenas; in gratitude for their continuing cooperation over land access; Australia-the Australian Research Council; Brazil-Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnologico (CNPq); Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos (FINEP); Fundacao de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ); Sao Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) grant Nos. 2010/07359-6 and 1999/05404-3; Ministerio da Ciencia, Tecnologia, Inovacoes e Comunicacoes (MCTIC); Czech Republic-grant Nos. MSMT CR LG15014, LO1305, LM2015038 and CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_013/0001402; France-Centre de Calcul IN2P3/CNRS; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); Conseil Regional Ile-de-France; Departement Physique Nucleaire et Corpusculaire (PNC-IN2P3/CNRS); Departement Sciences de l'Univers (SDU-INSU/CNRS); Institut Lagrange de Paris (ILP) grant No. LABEX ANR-10-LABX-63 within the Investissements d'Avenir Programme Grant No. ANR-11-IDEX-0004-02; Germany-Bundesministerium fur Bildung und Forschung (BMBF); Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG); Finanzministerium Baden-Wurttemberg; Helmholtz Alliance for Astroparticle Physics (HAP); Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft Deutscher Forschungszentren (HGF); Ministerium fur Innovation, Wissenschaft und Forschung des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen; Ministerium fur Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kunst des Landes Baden-Wurttemberg; Italy-Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN); Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF); Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Universita e della Ricerca (MIUR); CETEMPS Center of Excellence; Ministero degli Affari Esteri (MAE); Mexico-Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia (CONACYT) No.; r r 167733; Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM); PAPIIT DGAPA-UNAM; The Netherlands - Ministerie van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschap; Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO); Stichting voor Fundamenteel Onderzoek der Materie (FOM); Poland-National Centre for Research and Development, grant Nos. ERA-NET-ASPERA/01/11 and ERA-NET-ASPERA/02/11; National Science Centre, grant Nos. 2013/08/M/ST9/00322, 2013/08/M/ST9/00728, and HARMONIA 5-2013/10/M/ST9/00062, UMO-2016/22/M/ST9/00198; Portugal-Portuguese national funds and FEDER funds within Programa Operacional Factores de Competitividade through Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (COMPETE); Romania-Romanian Authority for Scientific Research ANCS; CNDI-UEFISCDI partnership projects grant Nos. 20/2012 and 194/2012 and PN 16 42 01 02; Slovenia-Slovenian Research Agency; Spain-Comunidad de Madrid; Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER) funds; Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad; Xunta de Galicia; European Community 7th Framework Program grant No. FP7-PEOPLE-2012-IEF-328826; USA-Department of Energy, Contract Nos. DE-AC02-07CH11359, DE-FR02-04ER41300, DE-FG02-99ER41107, and DE-SC0011689; National Science Foundation, grant No.r 0450696; The Grainger Foundation; Marie Curie-IRSES/EPLANET; European Particle Physics Latin American Network; European Union 7th Framework Program, grant No. PIRSES-2009-GA-246806; European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant No. 646623); and UNESCO.r (Australian Radio) T.M. acknowledges the support of the Australian Research Council through grant FT150100099. S.O. acknowledges the Australian Research Council grant Laureate Fellowship FL15010014. D.L.K. and I.S.B. are additionally supported by NSF grant AST-141242. P.A.B. and the DFN team acknowledge the Australian Research Council for support under their Australian Laureate Fellowship scheme. The Australia Telescope Compact Array is part of the Australia Telescope National Facility, which is funded by the Australian Government for operation as a National Facility managed by CSIRO. This scientific work makes use of the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory, operated by CSIRO. We acknowledge the Wajarri Yamatji people as the traditional owners of the Observatory site. Support for the operation of the MWA is provided by the Australian Government (NCRIS), under a contract to Curtin University administered by Astronomy Australia Limited. We acknowledge the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre, which is supported by the Western Australian and Australian Governments. The Australian SKA Pathfinder is part of the Australia Telescope National Facility, which is managed by CSIRO. Operation of ASKAP is funded by the Australian Government with support from the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy. ASKAP uses the resources of the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre. Establishment of ASKAP, the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory and the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre are initiatives of the Australian Government, with support from the Government of Western Australia and the Science and Industry Endowment Fund. Parts of this research were conducted by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics in 3D (ASTRO 3D) through project number CE170100013.r (Berger Time-Domain Group) The Berger Time-Domain Group at Harvard is supported in part by the NSF through grants AST-1411763 and AST-1714498, and by NASA through grants NNX15AE50G and NNX16AC22G.r (Bootes) A.J.C.T.; r r acknowledges support from the Spanish Ministry Project AYA 2015-71718-R (including FEDER funds) and Junta de Andalucia Proyecto de Excelencia TIC-2839. I.H.P. acknowledges the support of the National Research Foundation (NRF-2015R1A2A1A01006870). S.J. acknowledges the support of Korea Basic Science Research Program (NRF2014R1A6A3A03057484 and NRF-2015R1D1A4A01020961). The BOOTES-5/JGT observations were carried out at Observatorio Astronomico Nacional in San Pedro Martir (OAN-SPM, Mexico), operated by Instituto de Astronomia, UNAM and with support from Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia (Mexico) through the Laboratorios Nacionales Program (Mexico), Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (IAA-CSIC, Spain) and Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU, South Korea). We also thank the staff of OAN-SPM for their support in carrying out the observations.r (CAASTRO) Parts of this research were conducted by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO), through project number CE110001020. The national facility capability for SkyMapper has been funded through ARC LIEF grant LE130100104 from the Australian Research Council, awarded to the University of Sydney, the Australian National University, Swinburne University of Technology, the University of Queensland, the University of Western Australia, the University of Melbourne, Curtin University of Technology, Monash University, and the Australian Astronomical Observatory. SkyMapper is owned and operated by The Australian National University's Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics.r (CALET) The CALET team gratefully acknowledges support from NASA, ASI, JAXA, and MEXT KAKENHI grant numbers JP 17H06362, JP26220708, and JP17H02901.r (Chandra/McGill) This work was supported in part by Chandra Award Number GO7-18033X, issued by the Chandra X-ray Observatory Center, which is operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory for and on behalf of the National Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA) under contract NAS8-03060. D.H., M.N., and J.J.R. acknowledge support from a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grant and a Fonds de recherche du Quebec-Nature et Technologies (FRQNT) Nouveaux Chercheurs Grant. P.A.E. acknowledges UKSA support. J.A.K. acknowledges the support of NASA grant NAS5-00136. D.H. also acknowledges support from the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR).r (CZTI/AstroSat) CZTI is built by a TIFR-led consortium of institutes across India, including VSSC, ISAC, IUCAA, SAC, and PRL. The Indian Space Research Organisation funded, managed, and facilitated the project.r (DLT40) D.J.S. acknowledges support for the DLT40 program from NSF grant AST-1517649.r (EuroVLBI) The European VLBI Network is a joint facility of independent European, African, Asian, and North American radio astronomy institutes. Scientific results from data presented in this publication are derived from the following EVN project code: RP029. e-MERLIN is a National Facility operated by the University of Manchester at Jodrell Bank Observatory on behalf of STFC. The collaboration between LIGO/Virgo and EVN/e-MERLIN is part of a project that has received funding from the European Unions Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 653477.r (ePESSTO) We acknowledge ESO programs 199.D-0143 and 099.D-0376. PS1 and ATLAS are supported by NASA grants NNX08AR22G, NNX12AR65G, NNX14AM74G, and NNX12AR55G. We acknowledge the Leibniz-Prize to Prof. G.; r r Hasinger (DFG grant HA 1850/28-1), EU/FP7-ERC grants 291222, 615929, 647208, 725161, STFC grants ST/P000312/1 and ERF ST/M005348/1, ST/P000495/1. Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant No 702538. Polish NCN grant OPUS 2015/17/B/ST9/03167, Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation. PRIN-INAF 2014. David and Ellen Lee Prize Postdoctoral Fellowship at the California Institute of Technology. Alexander von Humboldt Sofja Kovalevskaja Award. Royal Society-Science Foundation Ireland Vilho, Yrjo and Kalle Vaisala Foundation. FONDECYT grant number 3160504. US NSF grant AST-1311862. Swedish Research Council and the Swedish Space Board. The Quantum Universe I-Core program, the ISF, BSF, and Kimmel award. IRC grant GOIPG/2017/1525. Australian Research Council CAASTRO CE110001020 and grant FT160100028. We acknowledge Millennium Science Initiative grant IC120009.r (Fermi-GBM) B.C., V.C., A.G., and W.S.P. gratefully acknowledge NASA funding through contract NNM13AA43C. M.S.B., R.H., P.J., C.A.M., S.P., R.D.P., M.S., and P.V. gratefully acknowledge NASA funding from cooperative agreement NNM11AA01A. E.B. is supported by an appointment to the NASA Postdoctoral Program at the Goddard Space Flight Center, administered by Universities Space Research Association under contract with NASA. D.K., C.A.W.H., C.M.H., and J.R. gratefully acknowledge NASA funding through the Fermi-GBM project. Support for the German contribution to GBM was provided by the Bundesministerium fur Bildung und Forschung (BMBF) via the Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft und Raumfahrt (DLR) under contract number 50 QV 0301. A.v.K. was supported by the Bundesministeriums fur Wirtschaft und Technologie (BMWi) through DLR grant 50 OG 1101. S.M.B. acknowledges support from Science Foundation Ireland under grant 12/IP/1288.r (Fermi-LAT) The Fermi-LAT Collaboration acknowledges support for LAT development, operation, and data analysis from NASA and DOE (United States), CEA/Irfu and IN2P3/CNRS (France), ASI and INFN (Italy), MEXT, KEK, and JAXA (Japan), and the K. A. Wallenberg Foundation, the Swedish Research Council and the National Space Board (Sweden). Science analysis support in the operations phase from INAF (Italy) and CNES (France) is also gratefully acknowledged. This work performed in part under DOE Contract DE-AC02-76SF00515.r (FRBSG) S.L.L. is supported by NSF grant PHY-1607291 (LIU). Construction of the LWA has been supported by the Office of Naval Research under Contract N00014-07-C0147. Support for operations and continuing development of the LWA1 is provided by the National Science Foundation under grants AST-1139963 and AST-1139974 of the University Radio Observatory program.r (GRAWITA) We acknowledge INAF for supporting the project "Gravitational Wave Astronomy with the first detections of adLIGO and adVIRGO experiments-GRAWITA" PI: E. Brocato. Observations are made with ESO Telescopes at the Paranal Observatory under programmes ID 099.D-0382 (PI: E. Pian), 099.D-0622 (PI: P. D'Avanzo), 099.D-0191 (PI: A. Grado), 099.D-0116 (PI: S. Covino) and with the REM telescope at the ESO La Silla Observatory under program ID 35020 (PI: S. Campana). We thank the ESO operation staff for excellent support of this program. The Sardinia Radio Telescope (SRT) is funded by the Department of University and Research (MIUR), the Italian Space Agency (ASI), and the Autonomous Region of Sardinia (RAS) and is operated as National Facility by the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF). Z.J. is supported by the External Cooperation Program of BIC (number 114332KYSB20160007). J.M.; r r is supported by the Hundred Talent Program, the Major Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (KJZD-EW-M06), the National Natural Science Foundation of China 11673062, and the Oversea Talent Program of Yunnan Province. R.L.C. Starling, K.W., A.B.H., N.R.T., and C.G.M. are supported by the STFC (Science and Technology Facilities Council). D.K., acknowledges the financial support from the Slovenian Research Agency (P1-0188). S.K. and A.N.G. acknowledge support by grant DFG Kl 766/16-3. D.G. acknowledges the financial support of the UnivEarthS Labex program at Sorbonne Paris Cite (ANR-10-LABX-0023 and ANR-11-IDEX-0005-02). K.T. was supported by JSPS grant 15H05437 and by a JST Consortia grant.r (GROND) Part of the funding for GROND was generously granted from the Leibniz-Prize to Prof. G. Hasinger (DFG grant HA 1850/28-1). "We acknowledge the excellent help in obtaining GROND data from Angela Hempel, Markus Rabus and Regis Lachaume on La Silla."r (GROWTH, JAGWAR, Caltech-NRAO, TTU-NRAO, and NuSTAR) This work was supported by the GROWTH (Global Relay of Observatories Watching Transients Happen) project funded by the National Science Foundation under PIRE grant No. 1545949. GROWTH is a collaborative project among California Institute of Technology (USA), University of Maryland College Park (USA), University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (USA), Texas Tech University (USA), San Diego State University (USA), Los Alamos National Laboratory (USA), Tokyo Institute of Technology (Japan), National Central University (Taiwan), Indian Institute of Astrophysics (India), Inter-University Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics (India), Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel), The Oskar Klein Centre at Stockholm University (Sweden), Humboldt University (Germany), Liverpool John Moores University (UK). A.H. acknowledges support by the I-Core Program of the Planning and Budgeting Committee and the Israel Science Foundation. T.M. acknowledges the support of the Australian Research Council through grant FT150100099. Parts of this research were conducted by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO), through project number CE110001020. The Australia Telescope Compact Array is part of the Australia Telescope National Facility which is funded by the Australian Government for operation as a National Facility managed by CSIRO. D.L.K. is additionally supported by NSF grant AST-1412421. A.A.M. is funded by the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope Corporation in support of the Data Science Fellowship Program. P.C.Y., C.C.N., and W.H.I. thank the support from grants MOST104-2923-M-008-004-MY5 and MOST106-2112-M-008-007. A.C. acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation CAREER award 1455090, "CAREER: Radio and gravitational-wave emission from the largest explosions since the Big Bang." T.P. acknowledges the support of Advanced ERC grant TReX. B.E.C. thanks SMARTS 1.3 m Queue Manager Bryndis Cruz for prompt scheduling of the SMARTS observations. Basic research in radio astronomy at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) is funded by 6.1 Base funding. Construction and installation of VLITE was supported by NRL Sustainment Restoration and Maintenance funding. K.P.M.'s research is supported by the Oxford Centre for Astrophysical Surveys, which is funded through the Hintze Family Charitable Foundation. J.S. and A.G. are grateful for support from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation. GREAT is funded by the Swedish Research Council (V.R.). E.O.O.; r r is grateful for the support by grants from the Israel Science Foundation, Minerva, Israeli ministry of Science, the US-Israel Binational Science Foundation, and the I-CORE Program of the Planning and Budgeting Committee and The Israel Science Foundation. We thank the staff of the GMRT that made these observations possible. The GMRT is run by the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. AYQH was supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under grant No. DGE-1144469. S.R. has been supported by the Swedish Research Council (VR) under grant number 2016 03657 3, by the Swedish National Space Board under grant number Dnr. 107/16 and by the research environment grant "Gravitational Radiation and Electromagnetic Astrophysical Transients (GREAT)" funded by the Swedish Research council (V.R.) under Dnr. 2016-06012.r We acknowledge the support of the Science and Engineering Research Board, Department of Science and Technology, India and the Indo-US Science and Technology Foundation for the GROWTH-India project.r (HAWC) We acknowledge the support from: the US National Science Foundation (NSF); the US Department of Energy Office of High-Energy Physics; the Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program of Los Alamos National Laboratory; Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia (CONACyT), Mexico (grants 271051, 232656, 167281, 260378, 179588, 239762, 254964, 271737, 258865, 243290); Red HAWC, Mexico; DGAPA-UNAM (grants RG100414, IN111315, IN111716-3, IA102715, 109916); VIEP-BUAP; the University of Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation; the Institute of Geophysics, Planetary Physics, and Signatures at Los Alamos National Laboratory; Polish Science Centre grant DEC-2014/13/B/ST9/945. We acknowledge the support of the Science and Engineering Research Board, Department of Science and Technology, India and the Indo-US Science and Technology Foundation for the GROWTH-India project.r (H.E.S.S.) The support of the Namibian authorities and of the University of Namibia in facilitating the construction and operation of H.E.S.S. is gratefully acknowledged, as is the support by the German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF), the Max Planck Society, the German Research Foundation (DFG), the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the French Ministry for Research, the CNRS-IN2P3 and the Astroparticle Interdisciplinary Programme of the CNRS, the U.K. Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), the IPNP of the Charles University, the Czech Science Foundation, the Polish National Science Centre, the South African Department of Science and Technology and National Research Foundation, the University of Namibia, the National Commission on Research, Science and Technology of Namibia (NCRST), the Innsbruck University, the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), and the Austrian Federal Ministry for Science, Research and Economy, the University of Adelaide and the Australian Research Council, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and by the University of Amsterdam. We appreciate the excellent work of the technical support staff in Berlin, Durham, Hamburg, Heidelberg, Palaiseau, Paris, Saclay, and in Namibia in the construction and operation of the equipment. This work benefited from services provided by the H.E.S.S. Virtual Organisation, supported by the national resource providers of the EGI Federation.; r r r (Insight-HXMT) The Insight-HXMT team acknowledges the support from the China National Space Administration (CNSA), the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS; grant No. XDB23040400), and the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (MOST; grant No. 2016YFA0400800).r (IceCube) We acknowledge the support from the following agencies: U.S. National Science Foundation-Office of Polar Programs, U.S. National Science Foundation-Physics Division, University of Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, the Grid Laboratory of Wisconsin (GLOW) grid infrastructure at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Open Science Grid (OSG) grid infrastructure; U.S. Department of Energy, and National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, the Louisiana Optical Network Initiative (LONI) grid computing resources; Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, WestGrid and Compute/Calcul Canada; Swedish Research Council, Swedish Polar Research Secretariat, Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC), and Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, Sweden; German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF), Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), Helmholtz Alliance for Astroparticle Physics (HAP), Initiative and Networking Fund of the Helmholtz Association, Germany; Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS-FWO), FWO Odysseus programme, Flanders Institute to encourage scientific and technological research in industry (IWT), Belgian Federal Science Policy Office (Belspo); Marsden Fund, New Zealand; Australian Research Council; Japan Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS); the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), Switzerland; National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF); Villum Fonden, Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF), Denmark.r (IKI-GW) A.S.P., A.A.V., E.D.M., and P.Y.u.M. acknowledge the support from the Russian Science Foundation (grant 15-1230015). V.A.K., A.V.K., and I.V.R. acknowledge the Science and Education Ministry of Kazakhstan (grant No. 0075/GF4). R.I. is grateful to the grant RUSTAVELI FR/379/6-300/14 for partial support. We acknowledge the excellent help in obtaining Chilescope data from Sergei Pogrebsskiy and Ivan Rubzov.r (INTEGRAL) This work is based on observations with INTEGRAL, an ESA project with instruments and science data center funded by ESA member states (especially the PI countries: Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Spain), and with the participation of Russia and the USA. The INTEGRAL SPI project has been completed under the responsibility and leadership of CNES. The SPI-ACS detector system has been provided by MPE Garching/Germany. The SPI team is grateful to ASI, CEA, CNES, DLR, ESA, INTA, NASA, and OSTC for their support. The Italian INTEGRAL team acknowledges the support of ASI/INAF agreement No. 2013-025-R.1. R.D. and A.v.K. acknowledge the German INTEGRAL support through DLR grant 50 OG 1101. A.L. and R.S. acknowledge the support from the Russian Science Foundation (grant 14-22-00271). A.D. is funded by Spanish MINECO/FEDER grant ESP2015-65712-C5-1-R.r (IPN) K.H. is grateful for support under NASA grant NNX15AE60G. R.L.A. and D.D.F. are grateful for support under RFBR grant 16-29-13009-ofi-m.; r r r (J-GEM) MEXT KAKENHI (JP17H06363, JP15H00788, JP24103003, JP10147214, JP10147207), JSPS KAKENHI (JP16H02183, JP15H02075, JP15H02069, JP26800103, JP25800103), Inter-University Cooperation Program of the MEXT, the NINS program for cross-disciplinary science study, the Toyota Foundation (D11-R-0830), the Mitsubishi Foundation, the Yamada Science Foundation, Inoue Foundation for Science, the National Research Foundation of South Africa.r (KU) The Korea-Uzbekistan Consortium team acknowledges the support from the NRF grant No. 2017R1A3A3001362, and the KASI grant 2017-1-830-03. This research has made use of the KMTNet system operated by KASI.r (Las Cumbres) Support for I. A. and J.B. was provided by NASA through the Einstein Fellowship Program, grants PF6-170148 and PF7-180162, respectively. D.A.H., C.M., and G.H. are supported by NSF grant AST-1313484. D.P. and D.M acknowledge support by Israel Science Foundation grant 541/17. This work makes use of observations from the LCO network.r (LIGO and Virgo) The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the United States National Science Foundation (NSF) for the construction and operation of the LIGO Laboratory and Advanced LIGO as well as the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) of the United Kingdom, the Max-Planck- Society (MPS), and the State of Niedersachsen/Germany for support of the construction of Advanced LIGO and construction and operation of the GEO600 detector. Additional support for advanced LIGO was provided by the Australian Research Council. The authors gratefully acknowledge the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, for the construction and operation of the Virgo detector and the creation and support of the EGO consortium.; r r The authors also gratefully acknowledge research support from these agencies as well as by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research of India, the Department of Science and Technology, India, the Science & Engineering Research Board (SERB), India, the Ministry of Human Resource Development, India, the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigacion, the Vicepresidencia i Conselleria d'Innovacio Recerca i Turisme and the Conselleria d'Educacio i Universitat del Govern de les Illes Balears, the Conselleria d'Educacio Investigacio Cultura i Esport de la Generalitat Valenciana, the National Science Centre of Poland, the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, the Russian Science Foundation, the European Commission, the European Regional Development Funds (ERDF), the Royal Society, the Scottish Funding Council, the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance, the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA), the Lyon Institute of Origins (LIO), the National Research, Development and Innovation Office Hungary (NKFI), the National Research Foundation of Korea, Industry Canada and the Province of Ontario through the Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation, the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council Canada, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, the Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovations, and Communications, the International Center for Theoretical Physics South American Institute for Fundamental Research (ICTP-SAIFR), the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), the China National Space Administration (CNSA) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (MOST), the Leverhulme Trust, the Research Corporation, the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), Taiwan and the Kavli Foundation. The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the NSF, STFC, MPS, INFN, CNRS, and the State of Niedersachsen/Germany for provision of computational resources. The MAXI team acknowledges the support by JAXA, RIKEN, and MEXT KAKENHI grant number JP 17H06362. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. The European VLBI Network is a joint facility of independent European, African, Asian, and North American radio astronomy institutes. Scientific results from data presented in this publication are derived from the following EVN project code: RP029.r e-MERLIN is a National Facility operated by the University of Manchester at Jodrell Bank Observatory on behalf of STFC. The collaboration between LIGO/Virgo and EVN/eMERLIN is part of a project that has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 653477. We thank Britt Griswold (NASA/GSFC) for graphic arts. P.G.J. acknowledges ERC-Consolidator grant No. 647208. We thank the GMRT staff for prompt scheduling of these observations. The GMRT is run by the National Center for Radio Astrophysics of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. INAF, Italian Institute of Astrophysics ASI, Italian Space Agency. This work is part of the research program Innovational Research Incentives Scheme (Vernieuwingsimpuls), which is financed by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research through the NWO VIDI grant No. 639.042.612-Nissanke and NWO TOP grant No. 62002444-Nissanke.; r r We thank ESO for granting full access to all the LVC MoU partners of the observations of GW170817 obtained with NACO and VISIR under the Observatory program 60.A-9392.

This report describes trends in the beef industry in the Monsoonal North. It aims to provide the region's natural resource management (NRM) groups with an understanding of how best to support the industry, undertake the changes required to improve its environmental sustainability and economic viability, and to provide it with resilience in the face of increasing development pressures and climate change. This report charts the industry's history and development; describes its current condition and the pressures and drivers it is experiencing; and explores how these are likely to change in the near future. The region: The Monsoonal North covers 20% of Australia's land surface across the tropical savannas. It shares a monsoonal climate, extensive intact ecological systems, generally poor soils and limited development. Its river systems carry nearly half of the runoff. The region has a large Indigenous population; most land is either under Indigenous ownership or subject to Native Title; and the highest proportion of Indigenous people live in the region's north and north-west. The region also faces a number of shared issues, particularly the challenges of intensifying climatic extremes and pressure to exploit Asia's growing demand for agricultural produce, which is placing pressure on land and water resources. The industry: Cattle production is northern Australia's most important agricultural industry. Two-thirds of the Monsoonal North is currently used for extensive cattle grazing. Through most of the region, cattle are grazed at low stocking rates on native pastures, with introduced pasture species being restricted in extent. Most enterprises breed animals for the low-value live export trade or for fattening and finishing on better pastures or in feedlots. Cattle numbers in Queensland, Northern Territory and Western Australia have doubled since 1965, and fluctuated with changes in demand and climatic conditions. In 2009, the Monsoonal North held around 5.7 million head of cattle. High export demand from Asia and drought destocking has seen the region's cattle numbers fall and prices rise through 2014-15. In the longer-term, continued growth in global demand, a reduced Australian dollar and high global prices, and improved incomes are forecast for Australian beef producers. Since 2009, each of the three northern governments have released policy documents that included targets to increase the herd size by between 1 and 5%, with the greatest planned increases on Aboriginal land in the Kimberley. Between 2009 and 2014, the Northern Territory herd grew by more than the projected 5% increase. Herd size in Queensland has recently diminished because of drought, and the current government's stance on herd-building is unclear. Nevertheless, long-term growth is expected to increase the northern Australian herd by a further 80% by 2050. Recent growth in the northern cattle herd has been achieved through intensification (spreading grazing pressure using water points and fencing) and development of underutilised properties, notably on Indigenous lands. Indigenous pastoralism is growing rapidly, with developments in all parts of the sector from cattle breeding to slaughter. Markets: Most beef grown in northern Australia is sent to Asia, with Indonesia being the largest buyer of live cattle. Despite a long-established framework for assuring animal health and welfare within Australia, widely-publicised animal mistreatment in Indonesia resulted in the temporary closure of the live-export market in 2011 until animal welfare could be assured throughout the supply chain. This closure demonstrated how dependence on a single market exposed the northern beef industry to market volatility. Bilateral and multilateral trade negotiations by the federal government are now progressively broadening market access, with agreements favouring Australian beef now in place or close to finalisation with most significant beef markets. Enterprises: Cattle enterprises in the Monsoonal North have been struggling because, in real terms, cattle prices have declined, while input costs have remained stable. In addition, escalating land prices through the 1990s and 2000s encouraged many land owners to increase their mortgages to levels that became unsustainable once land prices fell. This has implications for environmental management. In comparison to pastoralists in a good financial position, those in debt have less resilience to cope with drought; are less likely to adopt practice improvements needed for improving enterprise viability and environmental conditions; and are more likely to suffer adverse health effects. Many enterprises, especially those with small herds, derive more income from off-farm work than they earn from cattle operations. While large cattle enterprises allow economies of scale, increasing cattle herd size seems less important to profitability than does improving herd performance. Performance: Except on Mitchell Grass pastures and small areas of intensively managed pastures, cattle performance in the Monsoonal North is substandard when compared to the rest of the country, and is affected by poor quality pasture quality. Breeding performance is typically poor; with low pregnancy rates; high foetal and calf death rates; and many cows are lost. However, the achievements of the top 25% of the industry indicate there is great potential to improve performance on the remaining properties. Health and well-being: Pastoral production is a stressful occupation, involving financial insecurity and isolation; and pastoralists have high rates of injury, disease, accident and suicide. Recent years have brought additional challenges associated with falling land prices, market instability and drought. In the Burdekin Dry Tropics, proposed coal mining is increasing stress levels for many pastoralists. Supply and demand: Domestic demand for beef in Australia stagnated because per capita beef consumption has fallen, but global demand is escalating with population growth and economic development. Demand for beef is expected to keep increasing until at least 2050, with greatest growth occurring in China. Australia was the world's top beef exporter until 2003. Only Brazil and India currently export more beef than Australia does. Australia's disease-free status gives it access to markets that are closed to these exporters. Australia's dominance of the live-export trade to Indonesia also helps provide a disease free buffer to its north. Australian beef producers are disadvantaged by protectionist measures employed by both beef importing countries and exporting countries. The Australian Government has been engaging in international trade agreements that will overcome some of these barriers and increase market access. Market requirements and consumer preference: A high percentage of Brahman genes in the herd makes northern cattle attractive for slaughter and feedlots in tropical countries. However, slow growth rates and long transport distances mean most beef is sold in the low end of the market. Ethical, health and environmental concerns have contributed to the decline in domestic meat consumption, and are influencing consumer preferences in global markets. These concerns are driving practice improvement throughout the Australian beef supply chain. Challenges: Industry viability is constrained by lack of infrastructure, including feedlots, intensive fattening pastures, saleyards and meatworks, inactive ports and poor quality roads, all of which combine to make freight expensive, pushing up input costs. Considerable advances have been made in alleviating these constraints by building meatworks in Darwin, Arnhem Land and the Kimberley. However, lack of competition through the supply chain may be depressing returns at the farm gate. The ports of Darwin and Townsville are operating at record capacity, but some northern ports with export facilities (Port Hedland, Weipa, Mourilyan and Mackay) have not operated for several years. Water for cattle operations and irrigated crops may be at risk if extraction for these and other activities is not sustainably allocated. While broadscale irrigated cropping is likely to be restricted to a small proportion of the region, its requirements for water resources and fertile soil may deprive the pastoral industry of some of its most productive pasture land. Extraction for mining and irrigated agriculture is of particular concern. This has become a contentious issue with several coal projects in Queensland's Galilee Basin. Mining also has the potential to disrupt pastoral operations by removing land from production for both mineral extraction and infrastructure. Again, this is a significant issue in Queensland, where several landholders will be affected by the rail corridor servicing mines in the Galilee Basin. The disruption caused by mining poses a risk, not only to the financial viability of pastoral enterprises, but also to the health and welfare of pastoralists and their families. If well managed, however, mining and agricultural development can also have co-benefits, improving regional economies and providing employment and infrastructure. Weeds, fire, pest animals, disease and cattle theft all impose financial burdens on northern pastoral operations. Production losses caused by weeds have been estimated at costing the industry around $1,000 million/year; pest animals: ca $36 million/year; disease and parasites: ca $390 million; and cattle theft between $1.5 and $2 million a year in Queensland alone. No industry-wide estimates are available for impacts of fire, cyclones or other natural disasters. Conversely, pastoral managers perform important roles in control of weeds, fire, pest animals and diseases that would not be undertaken if no one was living on the lands they manage. Climatic and seasonal conditions are also serious constraints, particularly in inland Queensland, where periods of drought of two or more years are not uncommon. Conversely, extended periods of above average rainfall may encourage pastoralists to stock land beyond its long-term carrying capacity, and develop unrealistic impressions of what average conditions are. This could be an issue in the Kimberley if the elevated rainfall of the last few decades is not sustained. Climate change is already being felt in the region. Temperature have risen by up to 1.0°C since 1910, with further increases of up to 5°C expected by the end of the century. Droughts, cyclones, wildfires and flooding rains are likely to intensify over the next few decades, and continue to intensify until at least the end of the century. Carbon dioxide enrichment may increase forage production, but reduce its quality and stimulate woody thickening, as woody plants are favoured over tropical grasses. In most climate change scenarios, whether rainfall remains roughly the same or decreases, pasture growth and safe stocking rates in the Monsoonal North are expected to decrease, with the worst scenarios predicting decreases in pasture growth and safe stocking rates of between 50% and 60%. Climate change will also have adverse impacts on each stage of the supply chain, with effects ranging from increasingly uncomfortable work conditions to increased frequency of flood and cyclone damage to infrastructure. Policy environment: Many organisations have an influence on the direction of the pastoral industry. Individually, or as part of cross jurisdictional alliances, national, state and territory governments promote industry sustainability and herd-building. The preferred approach is to improve trade relations; simplify regulation; invest in roads; and provide a conducive business environment to attract infrastructure investment. The Developing Northern Australian White Paper and the Agricultural Competitiveness White Paper further these objectives. Under Australian national legislation, the Red Meat Advisory Council was established to represent the interests of beef and other meat producers, and is reported to by various state farming organisations that work closely with the industry as advocates and information and extension providers. Research and marketing is largely driven by Meat and Livestock Australia (informed on northern issues by the North Australia Beef Research Council) and extension is delivered by state agencies, state farming organisations and NRM groups. The emphasis of both research and extension is on practice improvement, rather than herd building. The Australian Government funded Indigenous Land Corporation is also playing a pivotal role in the northern grazing industry by assisting Indigenous people acquire, develop and manage pastoral properties. Finally, the policies and assessments made by financial institutions can both determine the level of debt that a pastoral enterprise can acquire and the cost of repayment, and influence whether developments seeking external funding are seen as viable. The Australian Government is committed to climate change action by virtue of signing international agreements. Its commitments to reduce emissions will help moderate the long-term impacts of climate change. Both the Western Australian and Northern Territory Governments have also made climate change commitments and the Queensland Government is currently revitalising its climate change agenda. Regulatory environment: Legislation and regulation govern much activity on pastoral properties, most of which are pastoral leases coexisting with Native Title. This type of land tenure allows pastoralists to undertake most activities that can be justified as core business to a pastoral operation, including pastoral-related activities that reduce carbon footprints. Diversification into other activities requires the consent of Native Title holders, which is usually negotiated through Indigenous Land Use and Access Agreements. Pastoralists have the right to water stock and clear vegetation for pastoral uses, but conditions vary between jurisdictions and water use for agricultural development requires a permit. There is a lack of clarity about whether permits can be granted for non-pastoral uses (including diversification into broadacre cropping) in Western Australia and Queensland. Pastoral leases also come with a range of legislated responsibilities. Leaseholders in each jurisdiction are to manage weeds, pest animals and diseases and to report notifiable cattle diseases to the relevant authority. They must use National Livestock Identification Scheme tags to ensure their cattle can be traced through the supply chain, and adhere to animal health and welfare standards. In addition, as employers, pastoral operators must follow conditions laid down by Fairwork Australia. Graziers in the Burdekin catchment are required to manage their properties to minimise reef pollution. The rights of miners to access land and water override those of pastoral leaseholders. While legislation facilitating exploitation of mineral and gas and fuel resources purports to safeguard other interests (notably environmental matters and water access), few mining proposals have been rejected because of environmental or pastoral concerns. Practice improvement: Much effort has been invested in identifying the best practices to improve the profitability and environmental sustainability of the northern beef industry. Key areas of knowledge advancement include: • Improving land condition • Improving diet through exotic pastures and supplementary feeding, especially at finishing • Improving reproductive performance by culling non-productive animals, vaccinating against reproductive diseases and improving diet quality • Increasing liveweight gain through early weaning and improving diet quality • Spreading grazing pressure by increasing fencing and water points. Improvements to herd management are largely compatible with practice change required for reducing adverse impacts on biodiversity, carbon footprints and Great Barrier Reef water quality. Improved animal performance increases animal growth rates (meaning fewer animals are required to produce the same volume of meat), and therefore also reduces the methane emissions generated. Good herd performance in rangelands is also dependent on moderate stocking rates to maximise forage quality, especially by improving the cover of productive perennial grasses. Improved ground cover also reduces soil loss (when cover is at least 50%) and gully formation (when at least 75%). Resilience to climate change will be built by undertaking the practice improvements identified to improve pastoral productivity and land condition. Of particular importance is the ability to adjust stocking rates in relation to seasonal conditions. At the industry level, decision support, including improved access to climatic information, is required to assist pastoralists make the best decisions for their circumstances. Diversification: Another approach to increasing enterprise resilience is diversification. Options being canvased include small-scale irrigation of pasture crops for finishing cattle on the property, grain and oil seed crops, biodiversity conservation and carbon abatement. Conservation efforts on some properties attracted subsidies in return for entering into conservation agreements. Biodiversity offsets may widen opportunities for on-property conservation, particularly in Queensland, where a formalised offset scheme is being developed. A small number of pastoral properties in the region are also receiving funding for fire management to reduce carbon emissions. A range of other emission reduction opportunities are at various stages of development, including reducing emissions from pastoral operations through improved herd management and adjusting cattle diets and storing carbon in soil or vegetation. Natural resource management implications: As practices to improve performance are adopted and/or diversification options are pursued, careful management will be required to avoid potential adverse environmental impacts. Best-bet options for improving environmental outcomes along with pastoral productivity include: • Avoiding the use of "transformer" grasses (with high biomass and fuel loads), or at least ensuring they do not escape from improved pasture plantings • Protecting areas of high biodiversity values when increasing extent and/or intensity of grazing, in particular protecting biodiversity values on riparian corridors when planning irrigated cropping projects • Ensuring wet season supplementary feeding does not weaken native perennial grasses • Ensuring early dry season burning does not lead to vegetation thickening and biodiversity decline. The NRM implications of the current trajectory of the pastoral industry are mixed. Herd building will put more pressure on the natural environment. However, performance improvement has many benefits by reducing the number of hooves and mouths required to produce a kilogram of meat. If well managed, mosaic agriculture can contribute to herd performance while taking pressure off pastures and the natural environment during the wet season, but managed poorly could result in further degradation of alluvial environments and over stocking of adjacent areas. The environmental footprint of diversification into agriculture would similarly need to be managed carefully. However, increasing income from various forms of ecosystem service delivery, particularly on lands that are marginal for grazing, would be a boon to both pastoral enterprises and the environment. Central to all this change are the pastoralists themselves. And with all that is required from them and all the stresses and strains they already have to bear, many will be in no position to take up improved practices, let alone participate in conservation activities. Pathways out of debt must be found before resilience in the face of change can be achieved, and pastoralists must be supported in the adoption of new practices, rather than have it mandated.

Keith Hart on the
Informal Economy, the Great Transformation, and the Humanity of Corporations














International Relations
has long focused on the formal relations between states; in the same way,
economists have long focused exclusively on formal economic activities. If by
now that sounds outdated, it is only because of the work of Keith Hart. Famous
for coining the distinction between the formal and the informal economy in the
1970s, Hart is a critical scholar who engages head-on with some of the world's
central political-economic challenges. In this Talk, he, amongst others, discusses the value of the distinction 40
years after; how we need to rethink The
Great Transformation nearly a century later; and how we need to undo the
legal equivalence of corporations to humans, instituted nearly 150 years back.














Print version of this Talk (pdf)




What is, according to you, the
central challenge or principal debate in International Relations? And what is
your position regarding this challenge/in this debate?







I think it is the lack of fit between politics, which
is principally national, and the world economy, which is global. In particular,
the system of money has escaped from its national controls, but politics, public
rhetoric aside, has not evolved to the point where adequate responses to our
common economic problems can be posed. At this point, the greatest challenge is
to extend our grasp of the problems we face beyond the existing national
discussions and debates. Most of the problems we see today in the world—and the
economic crisis is only one example—are not confined to a single country.







For me, the question is how we can extend our research
from the local to the global. Let the conservatives restrict themselves to
their national borders. This is not to say I believe that political solutions
to the economic problems the world faces are readily available.  Indeed, it is possible that we are entering
another period of war and revolution, similar to 1776-1815 or 1914-1945. Only
after prolonged conflict and much loss might the world reach something like the
settlement that followed 1945. This was not only a settlement of wartime
politics, but also a framework for the economic politics of the peace,
responding to problems that arose most acutely between the wars.  It sounds tragic, but my point in raising the
possibility now is to remind people that there may be even more catastrophic
consequences at stake that they realize already. We need to confront these and
mobilize against them. When I go back in history, I am pessimistic about
resolving the world's economic problems soon, since the people who got us into
this situation are still in power and are still pursuing broadly the same
policies without any sign of them being changed. I believe that they will bring
us all into a much more drastic situation than we are currently facing. Yet in
some way we will be accountable if we ignore the obvious signs all around us.











How did you arrive at where you currently are in your thinking about IR?







My original work in West Africa arose out of a view that
the post-colonial regimes offered political recipes that could have more
general relevance for the world. I actually believed that the new states were
in a position to provide solutions, if you like, to the corrupt and decadent
political structures that we had in the West. That's why, when we were demonstrating
outside the American embassies in the '60s, we chanted the names of the great
Third World emancipation leaders—Frantz Fanon, Kwame Nkrumah, Fidel Castro, and so
on.







So for me, the question has always been whether
Africans, in seeking emancipation from a long history of slavery, colonialism, apartheid
and postcolonial failure, might be able to change the world. I still think it
could be and I'm quite a bit more optimistic about the outcome now than I have
been for most of the last fifty years. We live in a racialized world order
where Africa acts as the most striking symbol of inequality. The drive for a
more equal world society will necessarily entail a shift in the relationship
between Africa and the rest of the world. I have been pursuing this question
for the last thirty years or more. What interests me at the moment is the
politics of African development in the coming decades.







Africa began the twentieth century as the least populated
and urbanized continent. It's gone through a demographic and urban explosion
since then, doubling its share
of world population in a century. In 2050, the UN predicts that 24% of the world
population will be in Africa, and in 2100, 35% (read the report here, pdf)! This is because Africa is growing
at 2.5% a year while the rest of the world is ageing fast. Additionally, 7 out
of the 10 fastest growing economies in the world are now African—Asian
manufacturers already know that Africa holds the key to the future of the world
economy.







But, besides Africa as a place, if you will, a number
of anti-colonial intellectuals have played a big role in influencing me. The
most important event in the twentieth century was the anti-colonial revolution.
Peoples forced into world society by Western Imperialism fought to establish
their own independent relationship to it. The leading figures of that struggle
are, to my mind, still the most generative thinkers when we come to consider
our own plight and direction. My mentor was the Trinidadian writer C.L.R. James, with whom I spent a
number of years toward the end of his life. I am by temperament a classicist; I
like to read the individuals who made a big difference to the way we think now.
The anti-colonial intellectuals were the most important thinkers of the 20th
century, by which I mean Gandhi, Fanon and James.







But I've also pursued a very classical, Western
trajectory in seeking to form my own thinking. When I was an undergraduate, I
liked Durkheim and as a graduate student Weber. When I was a young lecturer, I
became a Marxist; later, when I went to the Carribbean, I discovered Hegel,
Kant and Rousseau; and by the time I wrote my book on money, The Memory Bank,
the person I cited more than anyone else was John Locke. By then I realized I
had been moving backwards through the greats of Western philosophy and social
theory, starting with the Durkheim school of sociology. Now I see them as a set
of possible references that I can draw on eclectically. Marx is still probably
the most important influence, although Keynes, Simmel and Polanyi have also shaped my
recent work. I suppose my absolute favorite of all those people is Jean-Jacques
Rousseau for his Discourse on Inequality and his inventive
approach to writing about how to get from actual to possible worlds.











What would a student need (dispositions, skills) to become a specialist
in IR or understand the world in a global way?







In your 20s and 30s, your greatest commitment should
be to experience the world in the broadest way possible, which means learning
languages, traveling, and being open to new experiences. I think the kind of
vision that I had developed over the years was not one that I had originally
and the greatest influence on it was the time I spent in Ghana doing my
doctoral fieldwork; indeed, I have not had an experience that so genuinely
transformed me since!







Even so, I found it very difficult to write a book
based on that fieldwork. I moved from my ethnographic investigations into a
literature review of the political economy of West African agriculture, and it
turns out that I am actually not an ethnographer, and am more interested in
surveying literature concerning the questions that interest me. I am still an
acute observer of everyday life; but I don't base my 'research' on it. Young people
should both extend their comparative reach in a practical way and dig very
deeply into circumstances that they encounter, wherever that may be. Above all,
they should retain a sense of the uniqueness of their own life trajectory as
the only basis for doing something new. This matters more than any professional
training.











Now we see spectacular
growth rates in African countries, as you mentioned, one of which is the DRC.
How can we make sense of these formal growth rates: are they representative of
the whole economies of these countries, or do they only refer to certain
economic tendencies?







The whole question of measuring economic growth is a
technical one, and it's flawed, and I only use it in the vaguest sense as a
general indicator. For example, I think it's more important that Kenya, for
example, is the world leader in mobile phone banking, and also a leader in
recycling old computers for sale cheaply to poor people.







The political dispensation in Africa—the combination
of fragmented states and powerful foreign interests and the predatory actions
of the leaders of these states on their people -- especially the restrictions
they impose on the movements of people and goods and money and so on – is still
a tremendous problem. I think that the political fragmentation of Africa is the
main obstacle to achieving economic growth.







But at the same time, as someone who has lived in
Africa for many years, it's very clear that in some countries, certainly not
all, the economies are very significantly on the move. It's not--in principle—that
this will lead to durable economic growth, but it is the case that the cities
are expanding fast, Africans are increasing their disposable income and it's the
only part of the world where the people are growing so significantly. Africa is
about to enter what's called the demographic dividend that comes when the
active labor force exceeds the number of dependents. India has just gone
through a similar phase.







The Chinese and others are heavily committed to taking
part in this, obviously hoping to direct Africa's economic growth in their own
interest. This is partly because the global economy is over the period of
growth generated by the Chinese manufacturing exports and the entailed infrastructure
and construction boom, which was itself an effect of the greatest shift from the countryside to the city in history. Now, the Chinese
realize, the next such boom will be—can only take place—in Africa.







I'm actually not really interested in technical
questions of how to measure economic growth. In my own writing about African
development, I prefer anecdotes. Like for example, Nollywood—the Nigerian film industry—which has just past
Bollywood as the second largest in the world! You mention the Congo which I
believe holds the key to Africa's future. The region was full of economic
dynamism before King Leopold took it over and its people have shown great
resilience since Mobutu was overthrown and Rwandan and Ugandan generals took
over the minerals-rich Eastern Congo. Understanding this history is much more
important than measuring GDP, but statistics of this kind have their uses if
approached with care.











Is it possible to
understand the contemporary economic predicament that we are seeing, which in
the Western world is referred to as the "crisis", without attributing it to
vague agencies or mechanisms such as neoliberalism?







I have written at great length about the world
economic crisis paying special attention to the problems of the Eurozone. My belief
is that it is not simply a financial crisis or a debt crisis. We are actually
witnessing the collapse of the dominant economic form of the last century and a
half, which I call national capitalism—the attempt to control markets, money
and accumulation through central bureaucracies in the interests of a presumed
cultural community of national citizens.







The term neoliberalism is not particularly useful, but
I try to lay out the history of modern money and why and how national
currencies are in fact being replaced. That, to my mind, is a more precise way
of describing the crisis than calling it neoliberal. On the other hand, neoliberalism does refer to
the systematic privatization of public interests which has become normal over
the last three or four hundred years. The bourgeois revolution claimed to have
separated public and private interests, but I don't think it ever did so. For
example, the Bank of England, the Banque de France, and the Federal Reserve are
all private institutions that function behind a smokescreen of being public
agencies.







It's always been the case that private interests
corrupted public institutions and worked to deprive citizens of the ability to
act purposefully under an ideological veil of liberty. But in the past, they
tried to hide it. The public wasn't supposed to know what actually went on
behind the scenes and indeed modern social science was invented to ensure that
they never knew. What makes neoliberalism new is that they now boast about it
and even claim that it's in everyone's interest to diminish public goods and
use whatever is left for private ends—that's what neoliberalism is.







It's a naked grab for public resources and it's also a
shift in the fundamental dynamic of capitalism from production for profit
through sales tow varieties of rent-seeking. In fact, Western capitalism is now
a system for extracting rents, rather than producing profits. Rents are income
secured by political privilege such as the dividends of patents granted to Big
Pharma or the right to control distribution of recycled movies. This has got
nothing to do with competitive or free markets and much opposition to where we
are now is confused as a result. Sometimes I think western capitalism has
reverted to the Old Regime that it once replaced—from King George and the East
India Company to George W and Halliburton. If so, we need another liberal
revolution, but it won't take place in the North Atlantic societies.











In your recent work,
you refer to The Great Transformation, which invokes Karl Polanyi's famous
analysis of the
growth of 19th century capitalism and industrialization. How can Polanyi
help us to make sense of contemporary global economy, and where does this
inspiring work need to be complemented? In other words, what is today's Great Transformation
in light of Polanyi?







First of all, the
Great Transformation is a brilliant book. I have never known anyone who
didn't love it from the first reading. The great message of Polanyi's work is
the spirit in which he wrote that book, regardless of the components of his
theory. He had a passionate desire to explain the mess that world society had
reached by the middle of the 20th century, and he provided an
explanation. It's always been a source of inspiration for me.







A central idea of Polanyi's is that the economy was
always embedded in society and Victorian capitalism disembedded it. One problem
is that it is not clear whether the economy ever was actually disembedded (for
example capitalism is embedded in state institutions and the private social
networks mentioned just now) or whether the separation occurs at the level of
ideology, as in free market economics. Polanyi was not against markets as such,
but rather against market fundamentalism of the kind that swept Victorian
England and has us in its grip today. The political question is whether politics
can serve to protect society from the excesses produced by this disembedding;
or whether it lends itself to further separation of the economy from society.







And I would say that Polanyi's biggest failure was to
claim that what happened in the 19th century was the rise of "market
society". This concept misses entirely the bureaucratic revolution that was
introduced from the 1860s onwards based on a new alliance between capitalists
and landlords which led to a new synthesis of states and corporations aiming to
develop mass production and consumption. Polanyi could not anticipate what
actually happened after he wrote his book in 1944. An American empire of free
trade was built on a tremendous bureaucratic revolution. This drew on
techniques and theories of control developed while fighting a war on all
fronts. The same war was the source of the technologies that culminated late in
the digital revolution. Karl Polanyi's interpretation of capitalism as a market
economy doesn't help us much to understand that. In fact, he seems to have
thought that bureaucracy and planning were an antidote to capitalist market
economy.







If you ask me what is today's great transformation, I
would prefer to treat the last 200 years as a single event, that is, a period
in which the world population increased from one billion to seven billion, when
the proportion of people living in cities grew from under 3% to around half,
and where energy production increased on average 3% a year. The Great Transformation
is this leap of mankind from reliance on the land into living in cities. It has
been organized by a variety of institutions, including cities, capitalist
markets, nation-states, empires, regional federations, machine industry, telecommunications
networks, financial structures, and so on. I'm prepared to say that in the
twentieth century national capitalism was the dominant economic form, but by no
means all you need to know about if you want to make a better world.







I prefer to look at the economy as being organized by
a plural set of institutions, including various political forms. The Great Transformation
in Polanyi's sense was not really the same Great Transformation that Marx and
Engels observed in Victorian England—the idea that a new economic system was
growing up there that would transform the world. And it did! Polanyi and Marx
had different views (as well as some common ideas), but both missed what
actually happened, which is the kind of capitalism whose collapse is constitutes
the Great Transformation for us today. The last thirty years of financial
imperialism are similar to the three decades before the First World War. After
that phase collapsed, thirty years of world war and economic depression were
the result. I believe the same will happen to us! Maybe we can do something
about it, but only if our awareness is historically informed in a
contemporarily relevant way.











The distinction between
states and markets really underpins much of what we understand about the workings
of world economy and politics. Even when we just say "oh, that's not economic"
or "that's not rational", we invoke a separation. How can we deal with this
separation?







This state-market division comes back to the bourgeois
revolution, which was an attempt to win freedom from political interference for
private economic actors. I've been arguing that states and markets were always
in bed together right from the beginning thousands of years ago, and they still
are! The revolution of the mid 19th century involved a shift from
capitalists representing workers against the landed aristocracy to a new
alliance between them and the traditional enforcers to control the industrial
and criminal classes flocking into the cities. A series of linked revolutions
in all the main industrial countries during the 1860s and early 70s—from the
American civil war to the French Third Republic via the Meiji Restoration and
German unification—brought this alliance to power.







Modernity was thus a compromise between traditional
enforcers and industrial capitalists and this dualism is reflected in the
principal social form, the nation-state. This uneasy partnership has marked the
relationship between governments and corporations ever since. I think that we
are now witnessing a bid of the corporations for independence, for home rule,
if you like. Perhaps, having won control of the political process, they feel
than can go ahead to the next stage without relying on governments.  The whole discourse of 'corporate social responsibility'
implies that they could take on legal and administrative functions that had
been previously 'insourced' to states. It is part of a trend whereby the
corporations seek to make a world society in which they are the only citizens
and they no longer depend on national governments except for local police
functions. I think that it is a big deal—and this is happening under our noses!







Both politicians and economic theorists (OliverWilliamson got a Nobel prize for
developing Coase's theory of the form along these lines)
are proposing that we need to think again about what functions should be
internal to the firm and what should be outside. Perhaps it was a mistake to
outsource political control to states and war could be carried out by private
security firms. The ground for all of this was laid in the late 19th
century when the distinction in law between real and artificial persons was
collapsed for business enterprises so that the US Supreme Court can protect
corporate political spending in the name of preserving their human rights!
Corporations have greater wealth, power and longevity than individual citizens.
Until we can restore their legal separateness from the rest of humanity and
find the political means of restricting their inexorable rise, resistance will
be futile. There is a lot of intellectual and political work still to be done
and, as I have said, a lot of pain to come before more people confront the
reality of their situation.











What role do
technological innovations play in your understanding and promoting of shifts in
the way that we organize societies? Is it a passive thing or a driver of
change?







I wrote a book, the
Memory Bank: Money in an Unequal World
(read it here, with the introduction
here), which centered on a
very basic question: what would future generations consider is interesting
about us? In the late '90s, the dot com boom was the main game in town. It
seemed obvious that the rise of the internet was the most important thing and
that our responses to it would have significant consequences for future
generations.







When I started writing it, I was interested in the
democratic potential of the new media; but most of my friends saw them as a new
source of inequality – digital exclusion, dominance of the big players and so
on. I was accused of being optimistic, but I had absorbed from CLR James a
response to such claims. It is not a question of being optimistic or
pessimistic, but of identifying what the sides are in the struggle to define
society's trajectory. In this case the sides are bureaucracy and the people. Of
course the former wish to confine our lives within narrow limits that they
control in a process that culminates as totalitarianism. But the rest of us
want to increase the scope for self-expression in our daily lives; we want
democracy and the force of the peoples of world is growing, not least in Africa
which for so long has been excluded from the benefits of modern civilization.
Of course there are those who wish to control the potential of the internet
from the top; but everywhere people are making space for themselves in this
revolution. When I see how Africans have moved in the mobile phone phase of
this revolution, I am convinced that there is much to play for in this
struggle. What matters is to do your best for your side, not to predict which
side will win. Speaking personally, Web 2.0 has been an
unmitigated boon for me in networking and dissemination, although I am aware
that some think that corporate capital is killing off the internet. A lot depends
on your perspective. I grew up learning Latin and Greek grammar. The
developments of the last 2-3 decades seem like a miracle to me. I guess that
gives me some buoyancy if not optimism as such.







It's obvious enough to me that any democratic response
to the dilemmas we face must harness the potential of the new universal media.
That's the biggest challenge. But equally, it's not clear which side is going
to win. I'm not saying that our side, the democratic side, is going to beat the
bureaucratic side. I just know which side I'm on! And I'm going to do my best
for our side. Our side is the side that would harness the democratic potential
of the new media. In the decade or more since I wrote my book on money and the
internet, I have become more focused on the threat posed by the corporations
and more accepting of the role of governments. But that could change too. And I
am mindful of the role the positive role that some capitalists played in the
classical liberal revolutions of the United States, France and Italy.











Final Question. I would
like to ask you about the distinction between formal and informal economy which
you are famous for having coined. How did you arrive at the distinction? Does the
term, the dichotomy, still with have the same analytical value for you today?








Around 1970, there was a universal consensus that only states could organize economies for development. You were either a Marxist or a Keynesian, but there were no liberal economists with any influence at that time. In my first publication on the topic (Informal Income Opportunities and Urban Employment in Ghana, read it here, pdf)—which got picked up by academics and the International Labor Organization—I was reacting against that; the idea promoted by a highly formal economics and bureaucratic practice that the state as an idea as the only actor. In fact, people in Third World cities engaged in all kinds of economic activities, which just weren't recognized as such. So my impulse was really empiricist—to use my ethnographic observations to show that people were doing a lot more than they were supposed to be doing, as recorded in official statistics or discussed by politicians and economists.






Essentially, I made a distinction between those things
which were defined by formal regulation and those that lay outside it. I posed
the question how does it affect our understanding in the development process to
know more what people are doing outside the formal framework of the economy.
And remember, this came up in West Africa, which did not have as strong a colonial
tradition as in many other parts of Africa. African cities there were built and
provisioned by Africans. There were not enough white people there to build
these cities or to provide food and transport, housing, clothing and the rest
of it.







In my book on African agriculture, I went further and
argued that the cities were not the kind of engines of change that many people
imagined that they were, but were in fact an extension of rural civilizations
that had effectively not been displaced by colonialism, at least in that
region. Now if you ask me how useful I think it is today, what happened since
then of course is neoliberal globalization, for want of a better term, which of
course hinges on deregulation. So, as a result of neoliberal deregulation, vast
areas of the economy are no longer shaped by law, and these include many of the
activities of finance, including offshore banking, hedge funds, shadow banking,
tax havens, and so on. It also includes the criminal activities of the
corporations themselves. I've written a paper on my blog called "How the
informal economy took over the world" which argues that we are witnessing the
collapse of the post-war Keynesian consensus that sought to manage the economy in
the public interest through law and in other ways that have been dismantled; so,
it's a free-for-all. In some sense, the whole world is now an informal economy,
which means, of course, that the term is not as valuable analytically as it
once was. If it's everything, then we need some new words.







The mistake I made with other people who followed me was
to identify the informal economy with poor slum dwellers. I argued that even
for them, they were not only in the informal economy, which was not a separate
place, but that all of them combined the formal and informal in some way. But
what I didn't pay much attention to was the fact that the so-called formal
economy was also the commanding heights of the informal economy—that the
politicians and the civil servants were in fact the largest informal operators.
I realize that any economy must be informal to some degree, but it is also
impossible for an economy to be entirely informal. There always have to be
rules, even if they take a form that we don't acknowledge as being
bureaucratically normal like, for example, kinship or religion or criminal
gangs. So that's another reason why it seems to me that the distinction has
lost its power.







At the time, it was a valuable service to point to the
fact that many people were doing things that were escaping notice. But once
what they were doing had been noticed, then the usefulness of the distinction
really came into question. I suppose in retrospect that the idea of an informal
economy was a gesture towards realism, to respect what people really do in the
spirit of ethnography. I have taken that idea to another level recently in mywork on the human economy at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. Here, in addition to
privileging the actors' point of view and their everyday lives, we wish to
address the human predicament at more inclusive levels than the local or even
the national. Accordingly, our interdisciplinary research program (involving a
dozen postdocs from around the world, including Africa, and 8 African doctoral
students) seeks ways of extending our conceptual and empirical reach to take in
world society and humanity as a whole. This is easier said than done, of
course.







Keith
Hart is Extraordinary Visiting Professor in the Centre for the Advancement of
Scholarship and Co-Director of the Human Economy Program at the University of
Pretoria, South Africa. He is also centennial professor of Economic Anthropology at the LSE.











Related links










Faculty Profile at U-London


Personal webpage


Read Hart's Notes towards an Anthropology of the Internet (2004, Horizontes Antropológicos) here (pdf)


Read Hart's Marcel Mauss: In Pursuit of a Whole (2007, Comparative Studies in Society and History) here (pdf)


Read Hart's Between Democracy and the People: A Political History of Informality (2008 DIIS working paper) here (pdf)


Read Hart's Why the Eurocrisis Matters to Us All (Scapegoat Journal) here (pdf)









Print version of this Talk (pdf)

Papua has abundant natural and fiscal resources but also faces great development challenges. On the one hand, Papua currently has the largest per capita fiscal capacity after West Papua. Papua is rich in natural resources such as non-oil-and-gas minerals and forest products. On the other hand, development challenges in Papua are significant, including geography, terrain and demography. In general, Papua is still underdeveloped both socially and in economic terms compared to other regions in Indonesia. This underdevelopment is evident in most poverty, education, health, and infrastructure indicators. The economy and investment in Papua are dominated by the mining sector and, in a distant second place, the agricultural sector. Between 2004 and 2007, the mining sector accounted for more than 50 percent of the Papua's gross regional domestic product (GRDP). As a consequence, economic growth was determined by fluctuations in mineral commodity prices. The second largest sector is agriculture, which accounts for about 14-18 percent of GRDP. This sector absorbed the most workers in Papua province until 2008. Meanwhile, industry continues to lag and contributed less than 10 percent to GRDP. The PEA is a part of the PEACH (Public Expenditure Analysis and Capacity Harmonization) program. This program is an initiative of the Government of Papua to continuously improve its public financial management performance. Consequently, the analysis contained in this report addresses issues that are the region's main focus. Today, the Government of Papua is trying actively to achieve a 'New Papua' through implementing the following agenda: a) restructuring the local government; b) developing a prosperous Papua; c) developing a safe and peaceful Papua; and d) improving and accelerating the development of basic infrastructure and facilities.

This synthesis paper is based on a review of three countries in West Africa-Burkina Faso, Mali, and Mauritania where state owned enterprises (SOEs) continue to play an important role and Governments have embarked on a number of public sector reforms are intended to have a positive impact on SOEs. SOE governance practices and problems are having strong similarities in all of the countries reviewed. These commonalities can be ascribed to the fact that all of the countries are transitioning from centrally controlled economic and political traditions to more liberal economies and to a more democratic government. All are facing challenges with implementing the legal structures left behind from colonial times. The data that is available shows that wholly-owned and state controlled SOEs under perform. Many are technically insolvent and survive only through government support. Their performance is not only poor in the financial area but also in the provision of needed social services. The country studies link the poor performance of SOEs, in particular wholly-owned SOEs, to their governance practices. Long-lasting reforms are not simply a matter of plugging holes in the legislative or institutional framework. Corporate governance is the result of a complex interplay of law, practice, institutions and culture. Action plans need to take into account incentives and the political, social and cultural context of corporate governance in the country in addition to the legal framework. Indeed, SOE governance is a system and making it work better requires a systems approach. Most reform plans in the past have focused on one or another element of SOE governance, which might explain why many have fallen short of hopes and expectations. Systems approaches, on the other hand, are important in complex organizations (such as SOEs) whose success depends upon the interaction and cooperation of other organizations and institutions. This synthesis paper presents the objectives and the methodology used in carrying out the reviews followed by a discussion of the features and importance of SOEs in each of the countries studied. It then segues into a discussion on the performance of SOEs which is supplemented by case studies of both successful and unsuccessful SOEs and key lessons learned the paper then presents the current Government initiatives for reform and the remaining challenges and recommendations. The paper concludes with suggestions on how to implement the recommendations based on examples from other countries that have embarked on comprehensive governance reforms for the SOE sector.

The Lao PDR has been a one-party, socialist state since the overthrow of the monarchy by the communist Pathet Lao in 1975, which was preceded by a long period of civil and regional strife. After a decade of relative isolation and close military cooperation with Vietnam, the new economic mechanism, introduced in 1986, ushered in an era of market-based reforms, which has continued to the present day. Lao PDR is one of the poorest countries in East Asia, with a 2006 per capita income of US$ 500. In 2004, 71 percent of its population of 5.7 million lived on less than US$ 2/day and 23 percent on less than US$ 1/day. However Lao PDR has grown rapidly since the inauguration of reforms two decades ago. During the 1990s growth averaged 6 percent per annum despite severe imbalances during the Asian crisis. Following successful stabilization, growth continued to average close to 6 percent during 2001-2004, accelerating in 2005-2007 to over 7 percent. Inflation remained well below 10 percent since 2005. Although Lao PDR qualifies for the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative, the Government has chosen to maintain normal creditor relations. The latest debt sustainability analysis confirms that, while risk of debt distress is high, medium term debt service is manageable, contingent on continued reform and prudent fiscal management. Foreign direct investment has almost quadrupled between 2004 and 2007, and exceeds US$ 800 million annually, mostly in hydropower and mining. Growth in Lao PDR has been pro-poor. Based on the national poverty line, the poverty headcount has fallen from almost half to one-third of the population during the decade ending in 2002-2003. The country's performance on other elements of poverty reduction as summarized in the millennium development goals is mixed.