Monthly Archives: November 2010

Giving Pakistani Flood Victims a Voice

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Pakistan Survivors Tell their Stories. International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent. Nov. 30, 2010.

“…the shows utilize the skills of volunteers with the PRCS gender programme. The young, energetic university students are responsible for developing programme content and lining up guests. “These shows are allowing us to communicate directly with flood-affected communities,” says 24 year old Sadia Jamil. “By providing a platform for them to voice their concerns, we can help find the best solution to resolve their problems.”

Haiti — struggling with “the development gap”

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This Wash. Post  article provides an unusually insightful explanation of the slow recovery process in Haiti.  Among the causes described are the extreme poverty, lack of a viable government prior to the disaster, lack of basic sanitation infrastructure, and the need to create a new organization to dispense funds honestly and with transparency.  See Funding delays, housing complexities slow Haiti rebuilding effort.

Robert Perito, a Haiti expert at the U.S. Institute of Peace, said the emergency response went well. “The reason for that is, we’re really good at it. . . . We have all this capacity, these wonderful teams that deploy. It’s nonpolitical. It’s humanitarian. There’s not a lot of decisions to be made.”

In contrast, reconstruction is all about deciding where and what to build. “This is a classic conundrum in development theory,” he said. “It’s called the development gap: How do you fill the gap between the emergency phase and the long-term development phase?

New Manual on Recovery Focuses on Psychological Aspects

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A new, free manual on disaster recovery, titled How to Help Your Community Recover from Disaster: A Manual for Planning and Action, is available for download.  (104 pp.) Some information about its development follow:

According to the authors,  development of the manual began after Hurricane Katrina. It was part of a large-scale, multi-year, and 25-member collaboration by the Task Force for Disaster, Community Readiness, and recovery within the Society for Community Research and Action of the American Psychological Association.  A distinctive feature of the manual is its grounding in psychological knowledge and in psychological principles closely linked to successful disaster recovery.

… the Manual is designed to guide both lay and professional readers through the steps required to understand the potential effects of disaster, organize the community, assess its needs, make an action plan, choose a strategy or strategies for intervention, reach out to various constituencies, track results, and share lessons learned.

We believe this Manual provides practical guidance to natural and potential community leaders about how to help their communities recover from disaster. We think it will be a useful resource in efforts to strengthen the capacity of communities to make informed choices, marshal resources, and facilitate post-disaster recovery.

The Diva has not yet had a chance to read the full text. She welcomes comments and reviews by readers.

New Idea for Better US Reponse to International Disasters

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As readers have noted, the Diva and others have lamented the ability of the U.S. to effectively response to major disasters in other countries.  It is interesting to note that a proposal for changing the response was made by Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, while participating in the Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas in Bolivia recently. In an article titled Gates backs crisis cells to aid Latin America in disasters, Terradaily, Nov. 23, only a broad outline of the concept is provided.

Defense ministers from across the Americas on Monday mulled the creation of crisis cells that would spring into action in a natural disaster, an idea US Defense Secretary Robert Gates described as “promising.” The proposal was discussed at the ninth Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas in Bolivia’s largest city Santa Cruz. Gates told representatives from some 30 countries that the proposal followed “honest assessments of what worked and what didn’t in Haiti” in the aftermath of that country’s catastrophic earthquake, which killed 250,000 people. The proposal involves creating a series of Military Assistance Collaboration Cells, or MACCs, that would share information and technology.

The concept is very interesting — sort of  a variation of  the concept of Recovery Swat Teams that have been talked about for many years in the U.S.

Thanks to Bill Cumming for calling the press release to my attention.

Presidential Commission on BP Oil Spill Issues 2 Reports

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Oil Spill Commission, 2 reports issued. [URLs for full text reports are included in the article.]

While oil companies and government agencies learned valuable lessons and developed useful technology from the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the country is still not fully ready to cope with a similar accident, the staff members found in papers submitted to the seven-member presidential panel. (The reports, on preparedness for the spill response and on the containment effort, can be read here and here.)

One major finding was that the oil companies, despite multibillion-dollar profits over the past several years, have devoted only minuscule amounts of money to planning to control or clean up after a significant spill.

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Pakistan Floods – preview of catastrophies to come and analysis of inadequate response system

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Confronting Climate Displacement: Learning from Pakistan’s Floods. Relief Web.int; Nov. 22. From the Executive Summary. [Note that a link to the full text is provided in the article.]

In July 2010, massive rain in Pakistan led to unprecedented flooding that submerged one-fifth of the country and affected more than 20 million people. While many experts believe the floods were the result of climate change, others say the science is uncertain. Regardless, most agree that natural disasters are occurring more frequently and that the international community is ill-equipped to respond. It is estimated that by 2050, as many as 200 million people will be displaced by natural disasters and climate change. The world’s poorest and most crisis-prone countries will be disproportionately affected.

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Haiti recovery – big problems and strong language re donors being duped and lack of accountability

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Major Aid Organizations “Duped Donors” and “Failed Haiti” Group Charges; HuffPost, Nov. 19.

The Disaster Accountability Project (DAP) released an online petition today, targeting leaders of major disaster relief and aid organizations for failing to do more to prevent the cholera outbreak in Haiti ten months after a devastating earthquake killed up to 300,000 and left 1.5 million homeless. Major relief organizations raised billions of dollars, while telling the public that their relief efforts included water and sanitation work. With half of the funds raised still in the bank, DAP says that aid organizations failed to use the funds with the same urgency conveyed to donors, and that a cholera epidemic was avoidable.

Executive Director Ben Smilowitz says the failure of aid organizations to respond quickly to the epidemic is different from donor nations promising aid that never materialized. “Donors have been duped. They generously donated in response to urgent appeals to save lives and help the people of Haiti after the devastating earthquake. Now, after billions in cash was raised, earthquake survivors are dying of cholera because conditions are so poor and the donated money is sitting in the bank. This is not what donors had in mind and it underscores the importance of transparency and accountability in relief and aid situations….”

For more information about the Disaster Accountability Project and the full text of this report, go to their website.

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Analysis of BP Oil Spill by NAS expert panel

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‘Lack of operating discipline’ contributed to BP spill, engineers’ report says; Wash. Post, Nov. 18

A panel of scientific experts studying the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has concluded that “an insufficient consideration of risk and a lack of operating discipline” contributed to the disaster, adding that key “decisions also raise questions about the adequacy of operating knowledge on the part of key personnel” on the ill-fated drilling rig.

The full report, titled Interim Report on Causes of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig Blowout and Ways to Prevent Such Events , is available from the National Academy of Sciences, both online and in hardcopy.

Post-Katrina: reconstruction of housing units in MS

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For five years,  disputes have been pending about rebuilding housing for low-income residents who lost their homes due to Hurricane Katrina. Recently, the matter was settled; and perhaps that settlement will be helpful in the aftermath of future disasters in the U.S.  Katrina Victims in Mississippi Get More Aid. NY Times, Nov. 16.

Federal and state officials and housing advocates announced on Monday the creation of a $133 million program to address housing problems that remain for poor Mississippi residents five years after Hurricane Katrina.

The announcement comes after months of negotiations by officials from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Mississippi governor’s office and housing advocates on the coast, and could bring to a close a long-running dispute about the state’s spending of federal grant money after the hurricane.

It seems that both parties had to change their positions to resolve this dispute equitably. Hopefully, in the future it will not take five years for residents to know what their living arrangements will be, after a major disaster.

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Recovery in Haiti — not a linear process

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Relief or rebuild? Balancing Haiti’s cholera crisis with long-term recovery. Source is a blog named Civil Society, under the category of  fundraising; Nov. 16, 2010. As Haiti deals with its cholera epidemic,  the author discusses the difficult balance aid workers must strike between a building sustainable future and dealing with a growing emergency situation. The current challenge is  how to focus on on sustainabile recovery while also addressing  the urgent need to battle cholera?

The answer is to try and bridge the gap between relief (short term efforts to save lives) and development (long-term improvements to economic, social and political conditions). The two have traditionally, and still often are, considered as distinct and separate activities. This separation is evidenced in how activities are funded, planned and implemented.  For example budgeting for relief may follow a one year cycle whereas for development five years can be more common.  Also there is often a perception that relief comes first, followed by recovery and then finally development.

However as recent events in Haiti have clearly shown this notion of “one-way” progress – that recovery will, or should, proceed in a straight line from relief to development with no back and forth – is fundamentally flawed. This traditional approach has, over the years, been challenged by the concept of “developmental relief”.  In simple terms, “developmental relief” involves meeting immediate survival requirements in a way that simultaneously builds longer-term strength.

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