Can Post-Disaster Reconstruction Be Sustainable?

​Natural events like earthquakes and inundations can hit most places, and when they combine with poverty it becomes a disaster.  Four decades after the big earthquake in Guatemala we can look back at some international projects that changed lives positively in small towns. The book “still standing” published by “Practical Action Publishing” talks about this and other relatively sustainable actions.  But they are exceptions within the wider picture, “small is beautiful” the phrase coined by F. Schumacher has not penetrated the international community of organizations active in development and aid projects.  

After the 2010 earthquake in Haiti most agencies decided to build temporary shelters, even though they basically knew that this is contrary to sustainability.  Imported soft timber and walls of pressboard will not last long and the metal sheets will fly off in the next hurricane, the inhabitants are back in their unsustainable world of before, new slums are created and the millions of Dollars have been spent on imports and salaries to foreign experts.  At meetings of the UN-based “Shelter Cluster” in Geneva there was wide agreement to never do that again, It seemed the lesson was learned. 

In late 2013 Taifun Haiyan hit the Philippines, and the International Aid-machinery started again.  The slogan generally accepted was “Build Back Better”.  Most agencies however seemed to be undecided how to achieve that and many started to distribute cash, others helped to rebuild using the same technologies and the same materials as before. They are not called temporary shelters any more, now they are “semi permanent shelters”……maybe the wording will improve the sustainability.  There is very little hope that the vulnerability of the affected families will be reduced through those interventions. 

In order to make a positive impact on sustainability, there must be changes on a wider scale. This demands patient investment of time and a closer look at the larger scale on the local level. But more and more decisions are taken in the donor headquarters, designing strategies to optimize the impact on theoretical backgrounds. The on site managers become informers and implement the decisions taken abroad. The projects are implemented, reported and closed.  Very few seem to be interested in re-visitng ten or twenty years later……

Forty years ago in Guatemala, the headquarters had no direct influence on the project, they set guidelines and they were informed by snail mail of the decisions taken. Maybe it was not efficient, but it was effective, and shows a level of sustainability that hopefully will be matched by some of the newer actions.