OR: a simple problem is a terrible thing to waste
There is an old village principle in Papua New Guinea:
If a fence is broken, fix the fence.
You gather some timber, call a few relatives, maybe share some kaukau afterwards, and by sunset the pigs are staying where they belong.
Simple problem. Simple solution.
Yet somewhere between the village and the modern development industry, something curious seems to happen.
The broken fence becomes a Stakeholder Engagement Opportunity.
The pigs become a Food Security Challenge.
The timber becomes a Sustainability Input.
The relatives become Community-Based Actors.
And before anyone picks up a hammer, there are workshops, baseline studies, monitoring frameworks, capacity-building exercises, gender assessments, climate resilience considerations, communication strategies, evaluation matrices, and at least one consultant arriving on a flight from somewhere far away.
By this stage, the pigs have probably moved into the neighbour’s garden.
Perhaps we have finally discovered the unofficial motto of modern development:
“A simple problem is a terrible thing to waste.”
1. The Village Test
Many Papua New Guineans instinctively apply what might be called the Village Test.
The test is simple:
“Could this problem be solved by the people closest to it?”
If the answer is yes, then perhaps the first solution should involve those people.
Not always. Some problems genuinely require expertise, funding, technology and coordination.
Nobody is suggesting a village should build its own telecommunications network or run a national vaccination program.
But many local frustrations arise when a straightforward problem acquires layer upon layer of management until the original issue becomes almost invisible.
2. The Water Tank Principle
Consider a common rural scenario.
A school has no water because the tank is broken.
The village solution is straightforward:
Repair the tank.
The development version can sometimes become:
- Conduct a needs assessment.
- Establish a stakeholder committee.
- Hold consultations.
- Undertake awareness activities.
- Produce a water management framework.
- Consider an Environmental Impact Study.
- Create monitoring indicators.
- Schedule follow-up workshops.
- Commission an evaluation.
- Seek additional funding.
Two years later, everyone agrees that access to water remains a challenge.
The tank still leaks.
Nobody doubts the value of planning. Communities simply wonder why fixing the tank appears to be the least urgent component of the project.
3. Kokoda and the Expanding Universe
The Kokoda Trail offers another interesting example.
Originally, the attraction was remarkably simple.
Visitors walked the trail to understand history, honour sacrifice, challenge themselves, and connect with local communities.
Over time, however, Kokoda increasingly became connected to a growing constellation of worthy causes:
- climate adaptation,
- gender equity,
- governance,
- livelihoods,
- youth engagement,
- biodiversity,
- resilience,
- social inclusion,
- community development,
- sustainable development goals.
All important topics.
Yet many trekkers still arrive for a surprisingly old-fashioned reason:
They want to understand Kokoda.
Many local people likewise ask a simple question:
“If Kokoda is the reason people come here, when did Kokoda become the least important thing being discussed?”
Meanwhile, the expanding universe continues to expand. The discussion about Kokoda becomes the destination, and the original purpose of Kokoda drifts quietly into the background. More workshops. More discussion groups. More reports. More catering. The trail, as always, remains exactly where it has always been—waiting.
4. The Workshop Economy
Papua New Guineans possess a highly developed sense of humour, and nowhere is this more evident than in conversations about workshops.
Across the country one occasionally hears jokes such as:
“The project has not started yet, but the workshop has already happened.”
Or:
“We have completed awareness on the need for awareness.”
The joke works because everyone recognises a kernel of truth.
Workshops have an important role. They can share knowledge, build consensus and transfer skills.
But communities often distinguish between workshops that solve problems and workshops that merely discuss them.
Communities sometimes joke:
“The village asked for electricity. The project delivered meetings about electricity.”
Likewise, a bridge does not become stronger because another PowerPoint presentation has been delivered about it.
5. The Consultant Migration Pattern
Another familiar observation concerns experts.
In village life, knowledge is often local.
The person who knows the river best is usually the person who fishes it.
The person who knows the road best is usually the person who drives it every day.
The person who knows the land best is usually the person whose grandparents are buried there.
Yet development projects can sometimes create the impression that expertise becomes more valuable the further away it originates.
This does not mean outside expertise lacks value. Often it is essential.
The challenge is ensuring external knowledge complements local knowledge rather than replacing it.
Papua New Guineans have long memories. They can usually tell the difference.
6. The Curious Case of Endless Alignment
One of the more fascinating phrases in modern development language is alignment.
Projects must align with strategies.
Strategies must align with frameworks.
Frameworks must align with priorities.
Priorities must align with international commitments.
Commitments must align with funding requirements.
Funding requirements must align with reporting frameworks.
Eventually the stars, moon, planets and constellations are all perfectly aligned.
The original problem remains exactly where it started.
Waiting.
Patiently.
7. The Bilum with a Hole
There is a lesson here that extends beyond development.
Imagine a bilum with a small hole.
The village woman notices it immediately.
She repairs it.
Problem solved.
The development approach sometimes risks becoming an international symposium on the future of bilum integrity, accompanied by a five-year strategic framework and a monitoring and evaluation matrix.
Meanwhile, the hole grows larger.
8. The Columbus Effect
Papua New Guineans have long understood a simple truth of island life:
Sometimes the greatest danger is not what already exists, but what arrives from somewhere else.
History provides many examples.
When Christopher Columbus reached the Americas, the ships carried more than sailors and supplies. They also carried diseases to populations with little or no immunity. The consequences were catastrophic and would reshape entire continents.
In 2020, many people in Lae could not help but think of this lesson.
At the time, Morobe Province had heard little about local COVID transmission.
Then came a COVID health-related workshop involving participants travelling from Port Moresby.
Soon afterwards, attendees reportedly tested positive for COVID-19, triggering contact tracing and widespread concern throughout the community.
To be clear, nobody intentionally brought the virus to Lae. The organisers were acting within the knowledge and policies of the time. Yet for many residents, the situation seemed to embody a strange contradiction: a gathering intended to discuss and manage a health crisis appeared to become associated with the arrival of the very problem it sought to address.
This might be called the Columbus Effect—when an intervention unintentionally becomes the vehicle by which a problem is introduced.
The lesson is not that conferences are bad, nor that experts should stay away.
Rather, it is a reminder that every intervention carries risk.
Sometimes the first question should not be, “How do we manage this issue?” but rather, “Could our response make the situation worse?”
The irony was not lost on the people of Lae.
As one of my wantoks might observe:
“The village had no crocodiles in the creek. Then a workshop arrived to discuss crocodile management.”
The story remains a useful cautionary tale. In development, health, and governance alike, good intentions are important. But good intentions alone do not guarantee good outcomes.
Sometimes the simplest principle remains the wisest:
First, do no harm.[i]
9. The Cane Toad Effect
The Australian government introduced the Cane Toad to Queensland in 1935 to control cane beetles in sugar cane fields.
The logic seemed straightforward:
- Beetles are damaging crops.
- Toads eat insects.
- Introduce toads.
- Problem solved.
Except the beetles lived high on sugar cane stalks and the toads mostly stayed on the ground.
The toads largely ignored the target pest.
And, to make matters worse:
- Toads multiplied.
- Toads spread across northern Australia.
- Toads poisoned native wildlife.
- Toads became a national pest.
A classic case where (so to speak):
The solution escaped from the PowerPoint presentation and entered the ecosystem.
😂
Around the same time, under the Australian administration, cane toads were also introduced to Papua and New Guinea, with devastating outcomes for native wildlife, agriculture and the environment.
In Papua New Guinea we might say:
“When a canoe comes from another shore, look not only at the people in it, but also at what travels unseen beneath the cargo.”
Related concepts include the Cobra Effect[ii], unintended consequences[iii], and James C. Scott’s critique of high-modernist planning.
10. High Modernism
The political scientist James C. Scott wrote the landmark book:
Seeing Like a State. [iv]
Scott argues that governments and large organisations often attempt to simplify complex local realities into neat plans, frameworks and categories.
The people closest to the problem often understand it best, yet their knowledge gets displaced by expert systems.
His examples include:
- centrally planned agriculture,
- urban redevelopment,
- forced villagisation,
- forestry schemes.
The book is famous because many readers recognise the pattern immediately.
A villager sees a fence.
The institution sees a programme.
11. Reflection
Papua New Guinea has benefited enormously from development assistance, dedicated public servants, NGOs, churches, volunteers and technical experts.
Many projects have transformed lives for the better.
But perhaps the most useful question is also the simplest:
“What problem are we actually trying to solve?”
Because sometimes the answer is a broken fence or a broken bridge.
Or a leaking water tank.
Or a damaged aid post.
Or a school without desks.
And sometimes the most sophisticated solution is not the one with the largest budget, the longest report, or the most workshops.
Sometimes it is simply the person who arrives with a hammer and starts fixing the fence.
As many Papua New Guineans might say:
We already know the problem. Now it is time to fix it.
12. A Final Word
History teaches us that not every danger arrives with bad intentions.
Sometimes it arrives carrying a workshop agenda, a strategic framework, and a return airline ticket.
😂
If I were to create a taxonomy of undesirable outcomes, it would look like this:
| Concept | Example |
| Columbus Effect | Intervention unintentionally becomes the vehicle by which a problem is introduced. |
| Cobra Effect | Incentives make the problem worse. |
| Cane Toad Effect | Solution becomes a larger problem than the original problem. |
| Workshop Effect | Discussion of the problem expands faster than resolution of the problem. |
| Kokoda Effect | The original purpose becomes increasingly difficult to locate among the additional purposes. |
[i] An interesting related scenario: the late Professor Stephen Hawking repeatedly warned against actively advertising our presence to advanced extraterrestrial civilisations. His argument was essentially historical rather than scientific. He pointed to what happened when technologically advanced civilisations encountered less technologically advanced ones on Earth. The example he often used was the arrival of Europeans in the Americas. His famous observation was along the lines of: “If aliens visit us, the outcome might be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans.”
[ii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive
[iii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequences
[iv] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_Like_a_State
