(cross-posted at Daily Kos)
Today is the 2nd anniversary of the Sumatra-Andaman earthquake. To the general public, it’s more widely known for the tsunamis that resulted, killing over 200,000 people and causing damage of historic proportion. In Asia, today is a day of remembrance of the terrible tragedy that occurred, which was incomprehensibly followed by America’s shamefully stingy initial response. To be honest, one does not hear much about the relief efforts occurring in the region today, so I decided to read former president Bill Clinton’s Washington Post editorial on the matter. He paints an initially optimistic picture.
The homeless received shelter, the hungry were fed, disease was prevented and substantial recovery has been achieved over the past 22 months. Nearly 150,000 homes have been rebuilt or repaired and 80,000 more are being reconstructed. More than 1,600 schools and health centers have been rebuilt or are under construction, tourists are returning to the region in large numbers, and economic growth rates have improved substantially.
I’ll cover the rest of Clinton’s editorial in more detail later, but I wanted to examine his initial claim first. The numbers sound good at a cursory glance – with a total of 230,000 homes either having been rebuilt, repaired, or in the process of being rebuilt or repaired, it seems that good progress is being made. However, the homes that are being rebuilt are not up to the necessary standards to prevent such a disaster from occurring again. In the Banda Aceh province of Indonesia, a large fraction of the housing does not come close to meeting the required standards:
A network of 40 organisations monitoring the timber used in reconstruction estimates that 70 per cent of it is illegal and much of it not prepared well enough to last 12 months, let alone the 10-year minimum under guidelines set by the government’s Agency for the Rehabilitation and Reconstruction of Aceh and Nias (BRR).
The assessment of housing construction quality is based on a survey being compiled by UN-Habitat and Universitas Syiah Kuala in Banda Aceh which are evaluating 161 locations across the province.
Bruno Dercon of UN-Habitat said about 5,000 of the 50,000 houses completed by the end of November will need to be rebuilt. A further 7,500 will require further examination.
That’s 25% of the houses that have been built to date that are possibly not up to par. Again, these houses are supposed to last 10 years. Currently, they don’t even meet the threshold of one year. Given that less than half the houses needed – 120,000 in all, just for Banda Aceh – are built, the reconstruction period for the people made homeless could last for several more years. And with the deaths of 70 people from flooding as a result of heavy rain, it’s clear that there is a lot more work to be done to improve the situation there.
In India, it’s not just the quality of the ‘permanent shelters’ that aren’t good enough. The new residences don’t account for cultural traditions when the new housing is being set up.
Nearly two years on, more than 9,700 families are without permanent shelter and live in temporary homes of corrugated iron which often become unbearable in the summer heat.
“Prefabricated steel structure houses … have been conceived more on the basis on capacities of delivery agencies rather than community needs and priorities,” the report by the Society for Andaman and Nicobar Ecology (SANE) and agency ActionAid said.
[…]
Worse, the traditional lifestyle of the Nicobarese tribe — who make up the majority of those who lost homes — has been ignored by federal planners sitting in New Delhi more than 2,400 km (1,500 miles) away, the report said.
[…]
“It will break up tribal society completely. It will fracture it,” Samir Acharya of SANE told Reuters.
Similar to the handling of funds in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in the U.S., where fraudulent use of government money has topped $1 billion and is likely to double that amount, there has also been a misuse of funds around the world as well. In India, the Comptroller and Auditor General has found a vast under-utilization of funds intended for tsunami relief. Recently, the U.S. and other nations have requested an investigation into the misuse of the donations from private citizens. Other problems have plagued the rebuilding process as well. In Sri Lanka, the longrunning conflict between the Sinhalese majority and the Tamil rebels has led to almost no progress being made, as the eastern areas of the island that were hit hardest are in rebel-held areas of the country.
However, it’s a study in contrast to see what President Clinton believes needs to be done to further make progress. Unlike Bush, who seems to strive away from talking about just how badly things are going in Iraq, Clinton recognizes that there are many hurdles to overcome in rebuilding the Southeast Asia region:
At the same time, the tasks ahead are significant in scope and cost. Some 200,000 homes must still be rebuilt or repaired, and in Aceh in particular the challenges of rehabilitating infrastructure and promoting economic development remain daunting.
So, as leaders tend to do, Clinton lays out a simple, concise 4-point plan for paving the way for a future that will help all the countries hit get back on their feet.
First, we must get better at managing risk. Climate change and patterns of human behavior ensure that more devastating natural disasters will occur in the future.
‘Managing risk’ may sound like an out-of-place business term applied to a rebuilding effort largely grounded in the goodwill of others, but it’s the main message Clinton sends is crucial: we must learn from the mistakes of the past to prevent a catastrophe on the same level occur again. Unfortunately, the increasingly volatile tendencies of nature make it likely that a tsunami could occur again. There needs to be an investment in warning systems so that no one is caught unawares like this again.
Second, we should pursue recovery practices that promote equity and help break patterns of underdevelopment.
Again, this is another forward-looking initiative that will considerably help improve the situation in the future. By ensuring that the residents of what are admittedly Third World regions can move up on the social and economic ladder, it’s less likely that the impoverished conditions that have existed will continue in a vicious cycle of sorts.
Third, we must recognize that peace is critical to any recovery process.
This is a message, as I noted above, that sorely needs to be instilled in Sri Lanka. Clinton notes that regional conflict in the Aceh province has died off as the community struggles to get itself back on its feet. Perhaps it’s a more idealistic message – peace always seems to be – but it’s important to recognize that working together is always more constructive than working against each other.
Finally, we must do more to harness the talents of local entrepreneurs and established businesses, domestic and foreign, in relaunching economies.
What Clinton seems to be advocating is an increase in microfinancing. Given that the last winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Muhammad Yunus, received the prestigious award because of his work in microfinance, there’s no reason not to go into the field. Financial firms may be understandably wary of the risk that it entails, but done properly, it can help people a great deal (the following is an excerpt from microfinancing in India):
Microfinance has gained popularity for several reasons. One, it is a much better alternative than the informal financial sector. In India for example, moneylenders charge rates of 36-72%. Secondly, members realize the value of assured long-term access to credit. Many SKS clients have been with us since inception in 1998, and have consistently taken loans each year.
This access to finance allows women to increase income, which benefits the entire household. How do we know this? Our return on investment (ROI) calculations demonstrate that most borrowers earn anywhere from 25%-200% more than the interest rate charged, due to low infrastructure costs, no tax or legal costs, and the overall capital cost that is just a small percentage of the total cost.
Although there are clearly many specific details that will require ironing out in Clinton’s plan, it’s a definitive way forward to not only ensuring that a disaster on this scale does not happen again, but that people’s lives are improved when all is said and done. Even in an editorial in a newspaper, the former president’s plan for the tsunami-stricken areas sounds a lot more coherent than the White House’s website on Iraq, which features a collection of news releases but no clear plan as to what is occurring in the conflict – or what the future holds. Compare that to the fact sheet released by USAID, which is managing official U.S. government relief. One may cringe at the $656 million we’ve spent (a mere fraction of what we’ve spent in Iraq), but at least there is a definitive list of what has been accomplished to date. It’s shameful that for all the money we’ve poured into Iraq, there’s not a list that could detail concisely just what our money has been spent accomplishing.
2 years after tragedy struck, there’s still a lot of work to be done in ensuring that the lives of millions return to normal around the world. But we’ve got a good blueprint, and we know that progress is being made – and the problems that exist can be fixed with more stringent oversight. It’d be a lesson that the current occupants of the White House should take to heart when considering what their new plan in Iraq will be.