The global development landscape faces profound upheaval as major donors sharply cut back on foreign aid. The Pacific Islands face an especially uncertain outlook as the world’s most aid-dependent region. This edition of the Pacific Aid Map presents five key findings that are critical to understanding the future of development and competition in the region.

The Pacific Islands have become an arena of intensifying geopolitical competition. This policy brief proposes Australia should lead the creation of a formal intelligence-sharing framework – a 'Pacific Eyes agreement' – initially involving Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, and Fiji, the four most closely aligned countries in the region.

Democratic erosion is the incremental and multifaceted deterioration in the freedoms, guarantees and processes vital to the functioning of democracy. This interactive tool sets out a framework showing how different drivers of erosion interact, reinforce one another and create feedback loops that accelerate decline. It identifies five reinforcing loops of democratic erosion.

Pacific Island countries are among the most climate vulnerable in the world and face huge unmet adaptation financing needs. This policy brief outlines how it is in Australia’s interest to help meet this need. It recommends that Australia should direct more of its aid resources to the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific for...

This report outlines how soaring debt repayments and a sharp reduction in lending have transformed China’s role in developing country finances from capital provider to debt collector. Mounting pressures from Chinese debts are especially severe for many of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable countries. A retrenchment in Western aid and trade is compounding these...