A Concrete Plan for the Pacific: A Comparative Analysis of Policy Instruments Used to Encourage Responsible Sourcing of Aggregates for Infrastructure Projects in the Pacific Islands.
Abstract
Aggregates (sand and gravel) are an important global material given their use as a key ingredient in construction applications such as concrete, road base and land reclamation. Such is the importance of aggregates for development that they have been coined �development minerals�, reflecting the close link between development outcomes and the availability of these low value, but high impact, materials. The Pacific Islands is a region where infrastructure development is a priority for Pacific Island Governments, with international donor partners (both bilateral and multilateral) scrambling to fill the infrastructure gap � this will require large amounts of aggregates. Currently, aggregates are sourced from far and wide despite local resources being available, largely due to constraints that are present in the Pacific including the environmental and social safeguard risks associated with aggregate extraction on small island states, remoteness of states, sectoral capacity, government capacity and quality of aggregate materials locally. Whilst there has been lots of high quality, recent research informed by extensive analysis of shipping data and stakeholder interaction, there is a focus on the principles of responsible sourcing of aggregates in the Pacific Islands and what initiatives can be funded to align with these principles. Indeed, these initiatives are valuable for future infrastructure development projects, however, this thesis takes an important step back and provides a comparative analysis of the myriad policy instruments available to government and non-government policy actors. Framing the responsible sourcing of aggregates as an environmental policy problem allows for the comparative analysis to utilise Dovers and Hussey�s (2013) framework for assessing the relative merits of policy instruments to provide new insights into which instrument, or combinations of policy instruments, is most effective at ensuring construction contractors source aggregates responsibility for infrastructure development projects in the Pacific Islands. The method of comparative analysis developed in this thesis to assess the relative merits of policy instruments will also assist donor partners in selecting the instrument(s) that best fits their needs. As such, the results of this thesis will help policy actors in the region develop a �concrete plan� for sourcing aggregates to use on infrastructure projects, with this particular comparative analysis method having the potential to be applied to a wide range of other policy problems relating to infrastructure development in the Pacific.