Patrick Svenburg, co-founder of Random Hacks of Kindness, who was one of presenters at "Developers for Development" event at World Bank. “Big Data” –- the billions upon trillions of bytes of digital information that are pumped into cyberspace every nanosecond –- has a single, secular mission: to keep growing. Now, software developers – the not-so-nerdy techies who keep Big Data growing at its feverish rate –- are striving to channel Big Data into the public good. On Monday at the World Bank, developers came together with the development community -- in person and virtually through Skype video -- to figure out how to do that. The entire "Developers for Development" can be seen on B-Span, the World Bank's webcasting service.

The afternoon event, which attracted an auditorium-ful of in-person visitors (many of them curious staffers from risk management and ICT at the World Bank) and many more via the live webcast that was offered in English, French, and Spanish, started with developers showing what's already been achieved since the first CrisisCamp about data and the public good was convened in Washington with CrisisCommons-World Bank co-sponsorship in June 2009. The first demo was about the on-the-fly proliferation of CrisisCamps internationally in response to the earthquake that devastated Haiti in February.

 Schulyer Erle, co-founder, developer, and project steering committee member of OpenLayers, a popular web mapping library, described how  Open Street Map's "ad-hocracy" of developer volunteers quickly filled in the blanks of out-of-date and inadequately detailed Haiti maps for emergency responders:   "Suddenly it became imperative to improve the open source maps for Haiti. It would have been impossible for virtually anyone to go into Haiti and use their GPS receiver [to establish coordinates] and upload their data....You can see looking at this tiny section of the north end of Port-au-Prince [Erle displays a slide of new street details] how literally the first week after the earthquake the data beta was developed by people literally sitting at their desk or in their living room...scanning the satellite imagery that had been made available by haiticrisismap.org."

But how do you wrangle data to do good when you don’t have an earthquake or other catastrophic crisis to focus minds? That was the question for Monday’s participants posed by Michele de Nevers, Senior Manager, Environment Department, World Bank: "Clearly, the potential application [of this crisis-camp approach] in the broader area of environment and climate change seems obvious....I wonder how easy it is to mobilize volunteers when you don't have this tremendous crisis for motivation....It would be great to get people skilled in this area to bring those skills to helping understand changes in temperature and agriculture in Africa or support vulnerability mapping in fragile states. It would be great to be able to connect the people in your community with the people in our community."

Big Data can't magically supply answers to tough, every-day challenges in developing countries. But the volunteer technical community of the CrisisCamps can help the World Bank make sense of terabytes of data that would overwhelm even the most gifted staff. It doesn't make sense for the Bank to be the sole interpreter of this information or the sole developer of applications and mash-ups using the data. The Bank is well positioned, however, to make large data sets available and to clearly define problems. It's not our job to tell engineers and others how to solve problems but to be aware that if problems are not clear, they are unlikely to be solved. And so we need to keep convening CrisisCamps, especially when there isn’t a crisis of earthquake magnitude.

World Bank Institute's Aleem Walji (third from left) commenting on The Economist magazine cartoon of man using an inverted umbrella to channel part of a torrent of data to start a symbolic garden -- a parable that summed up the discussion on how data can be used for the public good.

The snow is finally melting in Washington, D.C. and its surrounding areas.  Things seem to be on their way to returning to business as usual.  We have just gotten through back-to-back blizzards worse than most seen in a century, evidenced in part by the stunned old-timers and record-setting snowfall levels.  That said, what we have recently experienced here is a far cry from the devastation and suffering caused by natural disasters in other parts of the world, such as the recent typhoon in Southeast Asia and earthquake in Haiti.  But that’s not the impression one would take away from the local and national news coverage of these snowstorms. Rarely warranted hyperbole has become typical in coverage of natural disasters.  Take, for example, what some print and broadcast news outlets named their snowstorm coverage: “Snowmageddon”, “Snowpocalypse”, and “Snowtorius B.I.G.”  Jon Stewart, executive producer and host of Comedy Central’s fake news program The Daily Show, poked fun at these ridiculous appellations.  And quite rightly, I think. 

It’s definitely the case that bad weather conditions and their corollary dangers must receive serious coverage, especially at the local level where up-to-date information is vital for safety and security.  But to appropriate a word from the website of a very respectable newspaper, there is also such a thing as “Snoverkill.” In stark contrast, it is too often the case that places requiring the most urgent attention and people needing the most help do not receive meaningful and sustained coverage.  That’s why I was so happy to see CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Sanjay Gupta returned to Haiti early this week, during the height of what Jon Stewart aptly called an “unusually large snowstorm” in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Cooper and Gupta breathed new life into what had been quickly fading coverage of recovery efforts in Haiti.  Of course, they continue to report on the controversial issue of the ten Americans being held by Haitian authorities.  But the bulk of what they've been talking about this week revolves around ongoing recovery efforts, the state of emergency medical care, and, most recently, investigations of endemic corruption that has kept the country poor. This, to me, is a fine example of the media carrying out its agenda setting function (see a previous post by my colleague Anne Arnold).  In Cooper’s own words: “We take you into the streets of Port-Au-Prince, because no one should die in silence and no one’s struggle to live should go unnoticed.” In CommGAP’s recent publication entitled Public Sentinel, Douglas Van Belle quantitatively analyzes relationships among media agenda setting, disaster response, and donor aid.  In sum, he findings suggest that “every bit of news coverage in donor nations creates a small increase in aid response, and the occasional flood of coverage of a major disaster is likely to generate a massive response” (p. 105).  In the same publication, Susan Moeller discusses techniques that can enhance media’s agenda setting role in support of disaster and humanitarian response.  First, naming the crisis helps.  CNN’s current coverage has been dubbed “Saving Haiti”.  Whether the name is appropriate can be argued elsewhere.  It’s memorable.  Second, “breaking news” can help maintain interest.  For example, early this week, a young man who had been dug out of the wreckage alive four weeks after the quake received much attention.  It was unclear whether he had been trapped under the rubble since the quake (unlikely, according to Gupta).  Whatever the case may be, the images were arresting and good visuals are crucial for continued public interest.  According to Moeller, featuring celebrities can have negative or positive effects.  Hollywood actors Sean Penn and Angelina Jolie have appeared in this week’s CNN Haiti coverage.  My sense is that because they seem to speak with sincerity and credibility, they are helping and not hurting the cause.  Moeller captures the spirit and motivation for this blog post: “Even the most calamitous breaking story—a tsunami, a hurricane, an earthquake—quickly devolves into a less dramatic recovery tale of politics, patience, and stamina and so is pushed off the front pages and the top of the news by more recent, and more spectacular, stories” (p. 74).  Thank you, CNN, for not letting recovery efforts in Haiti be snowverwhelmed this week. Photo credit: Flickr user ChrisM70

From the tragedy and wreckage of the Haitian earthquake come amazing lessons about how information technology and social media can bring help and hope to people trapped in catastrophic circumstances. A good place to see how this is happening is the Social Entrepreneurship website.  Crisis camps of "civic hacking" throughout the U.S. and abroad are quickly producing base-layer maps that connect Haiti's thousands of orphans with potential adoption families, mobilizing speakers of Creole (photo), and delivering myriad other tech-driven emergency assistance with few layers of action-delaying bureaucracy. The camps were set up by Crisis Commons, an international volunteer network of tech professionals.  The first CrisisCamp was actually held well before the Haiti earthquake -- in July 2009, at the World Bank.  Participants included a rich cross section of representatives -- public, private, nonprofit -- from the sometimes rivalrous world of development aid.  "Us" and "them" suddenly became "we." Civic hacking's Haiti successs stories are producing a flexible template for how emergency assistance can be delivered in other disasters, including those where climate change is at least a secondary cause, like storms and flooding.  Civic hacking's lessons will surely be extended to development aid in general, especially in countries with weak capacity.  Information technology can deepen and broaden capacity, and fast, as the proliferation of cellphones in Sub-Sahran Africa, South Asia, and other developing regions has been proving for years.

Georges Collinet, host of the popular On the Move with Georges Collinet podcast, recently recorded a new podcast episode about the Haiti earthquake and its aftermath, taking a look at the situation room at the World Bank and featuring an interview with World Bank Task Team Leader Nicolas Peltier Thiberge who has just recently returned from Haiti. The podcast is currently only available in French, but we're working on getting the English version up soon. You can listen to the French podcast using the embedded player below:  

Download MP3    

For more podcasts by Georges in English and in French, visit his On the Move podcast page, or subscribe in iTunes.

On-the-Ground Report: Alejandro Cedeno, World Bank Senior Communications Officer   As our plane began circling the Port-au-Prince airport waiting for clearance to land, I got a good glimpse of the ground through the parting clouds. From 10,000 feet above the ground, the devastation below was marked by blurry forms and an eerie stillness. In stark contrast with the images seen on cable television it was not an overwhelming sight. The extent of the damage was not evident from the plane, but something was out of place. When we finally landed, after flying in circles for more than 45 minutes, that out-of-sync sensation became more real. All the areas surrounding the airport had become a compound with hundreds of multicolored tents housing not only Haitians that have lost their homes, but also relief workers from various countries and multilateral agencies, such as the United Nations. They were pivotal in the life of Haiti even before the earthquake struck. This makeshift area around the airport—including a government’s emergency administrative office located temporarily in a police station—has become the central nervous system of Haiti after the devastating Jan. 12 seism. Even when fragile, Haiti is energetic and fast-paced, showing the resilience and determination of the Haitian people to rebuild their lives and communities. As I walked about the tents of Brazilian, Jordanian, Chilean and other UN blue helmets, as well as American army soldiers all assisting in the emergency, my mission here acquired new meaning and energy. We have come to help the government and the Haitian people to recover and assess its needs. We are here to listen and reevaluate with the government where the most pressing development needs are. We are here to find out where the additional US$ 100 million emergency grant we offered after the quake should go and how available grants of the current World Bank program in Haiti (approx.US$ 130 million) can support those needs. Reconstruction of schools, school nutrition, roads, disaster risk management, and a wide range of community-driven projects that have successfully helped Haitians in the past are topping discussions with Haitian officials. In agriculture and infrastructure alone, community-driven initiatives have supported 4,032 community-based organizations in rural areas, benefiting around 763,000 people (or 57 percent of the population of the rural communities covered by the program). This is a good example of what we’d like to call reconstruction with a human face—rebuilding lives and communities as opposed to just infrastructure and cities. We will continue to do this to help Haiti get back on its feet. All these tents are just testimony to the tenacity and hope of a people who are now suffering but will rise again.

On-the-Ground Report: Alejandro Cedeno, World Bank Senior Communications Officer   As our plane began circling the Port-au-Prince airport waiting for clearance to land, I got a good glimpse of the ground through the parting clouds. From 10,000 feet above the ground, the devastation below was marked by blurry forms and an eerie stillness. In stark contrast with the images seen on cable television it was not an overwhelming sight.

The extent of the damage was not evident from the plane, but something was out of place. When we finally landed, after flying in circles for more than 45 minutes, that out-of-sync sensation became more real. All the areas surrounding the airport had become a compound with hundreds of multicolored tents housing not only Haitians that have lost their homes, but also relief workers from various countries and multilateral agencies, such as the United Nations. They were pivotal in the life of Haiti even before the earthquake struck. This makeshift area around the airport—including a government’s emergency administrative office located temporarily in a police station—has become the central nervous system of Haiti after the devastating Jan. 12 seism. Even when fragile, Haiti is energetic and fast-paced, showing the resilience and determination of the Haitian people to rebuild their lives and communities. As I walked about the tents of Brazilian, Jordanian, Chilean and other UN blue helmets, as well as American army soldiers all assisting in the emergency, my mission here acquired new meaning and energy. We have come to help the government and the Haitian people to recover and assess its needs. We are here to listen and reevaluate with the government where the most pressing development needs are. We are here to find out where the additional US$ 100 million emergency grant we offered after the quake should go and how available grants of the current World Bank program in Haiti (approx.US$ 130 million) can support those needs. Reconstruction of schools, school nutrition, roads, disaster risk management, and a wide range of community-driven projects that have successfully helped Haitians in the past are topping discussions with Haitian officials. In agriculture and infrastructure alone, community-driven initiatives have supported 4,032 community-based organizations in rural areas, benefiting around 763,000 people (or 57 percent of the population of the rural communities covered by the program). This is a good example of what we’d like to call reconstruction with a human face—rebuilding lives and communities as opposed to just infrastructure and cities. We will continue to do this to help Haiti get back on its feet. All these tents are just testimony to the tenacity and hope of a people who are now suffering but will rise again.

In a situation room at the World Bank headquarters in Washington DC, Google, Microsoft, McKinsey, ImageCAT, EERI, and RIT are working with multilateral organizations and NGOs to coordinate the Haiti reconstruction efforts. From the feature story:

An inconspicuous room in the World Bank’s Latin American & Caribbean division has become the eyes and ears of the soon-to-be-launched reconstruction operation of Haiti following the devastating January 12 earthquake. Armed with top of the line, high-tech equipment to assess damage on the ground and with a great deal of enthusiasm and good will from colleagues from around the world, the small team manning this improvised "situation room" collects data and images of the flattened buildings in Port-au-Prince that are then processed and passed on to an army of experts getting ready to go to Haiti in a few weeks to start the arduous assessment and reconstruction process.

The operation bridges cutting-edge technology with international development expertise to help with assessment and planning:

Operation coordinator Galen Evans explains that the images they’re collecting are breaking new ground in aerial damage assessment as image precision is well above the satellite imagery standard of 60 centimeters of resolution. The photos being taken are 15 centimeters of resolution which means that experts would be able to figure out the position of objects as small as 15 centimeters in size (20 inches).

Read the full story for more information about the situation room and the groundbreaking technology being used in the reconstruction efforts. A few more photos from the situation room are below.

Joachim von Amsberg, the World Bank's country director for Indonesia, published an interesting op-ed in today’s Washington Post: Out of Aceh's experience, hope for rebuilding Haiti.  Despite the many differences between these two conflict-affected countries, he draws lessons from post-tsunami Aceh for a possible recovery in Haiti. “Local and national leadership count," he writes, "and empowering people is key.  In Aceh, strong top-down leadership was complemented by the empowerment of the people and communities. Victims became development workers. Aid recipients and former combatants became community facilitators. Displaced families became workers who rebuilt their houses. By channeling a large share of reconstruction funds directly to communities, the people of Aceh's problems were transformed as they became part of the solution. Their hard work meant that houses were built faster, at a lower cost, and better met the needs of the people.”

    Photo © 'Paul Jeffrey'

 >> Read full text 

Over on the CGAP site, a great overview on the importance of microfinance institutions (MFIs) in reconstruction and recovery after a natural disaster: “MFIs are not, and nor should they be, asked to be relief organizations,” says CGAP Deputy CEO Alexia Latortue. “But this does not mean business as usual. Financial services will be crucial to helping clients recover and rebuild. Financial services aren’t just a “nice-to-have” in this situation. Valuable services like accessing savings and transfers from families abroad can be a vital lifeline, and for some families the ability to access cash may mean the difference between life and death.”   Read the whole feature over on the CGAP site for a look at the role financial services play in recovery efforts. (Photo from the CGAP Microfinance Flickr photostream.)

We have been receiving a lot of requests for data and facts on Haiti, not only on migration and remittances, but also on the real economy. Here is some data we have downloaded from publicly available sources. Haiti Factsheet

 * Poverty headcount in 2001 (latest available year). Source: World Development Indicators (WDI); Global Development Finance (GDF), OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC), IMF International Financial Statistics (IFS), IMF Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF) review Aug 2009.   Haiti - Migration and Remittances

• 22% of physicians trained in the country Source:  Migration and Remittances Factbook 2008; Ratha and Shaw (2007); Docquier and Marfouk (2006); Doquier and Bhargava (2006); UN Population Division (UNPD) (Cross-posted from the People Move blog)

We have been receiving a lot of requests for data and facts on Haiti, not only on migration and remittances, but also on the real economy. Here is some data we have downloaded from publicly available sources.

Haiti Factsheet

• Poverty headcount in 2001 (latest available year). Source: World Development Indicators (WDI); Global Development Finance (GDF), OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC), IMF International Financial Statistics (IFS), IMF Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF) review Aug 2009.

Haiti - Migration and Remittances

• 22% of physicians trained in the country Source:  Migration and Remittances Factbook 2008; Ratha and Shaw (2007); Docquier and Marfouk (2006); Doquier and Bhargava (2006); UN Population Division (UNPD)  

World Bank disaster expert Christoph Pusch says Haiti may be able to learn from the earthquake-recovery efforts in Pakistan after a 2005 earthquake. Those efforts included livelihood support in the form of cash grants to the most vulnerable people, special support for the disabled, a home-owner driven rural housing reconstruction program, and satellite-based disaster assessment methods. Pusch talks about some of the possibilities in the short clip below.  

  The Pakistan earthquake killed more than 73,000 people, destroyed and damaged around 600,000 homes, and left over 3 million without shelter. International donors, including the World Bank, pledged US$6.5 billion in mostly low-interest loans.

With Sanket

In addition to the temporary protected status and facilitation of remittances - see my earlier post, when government offices and banks resume functioning, Haiti could usefully tap its large diaspora's wealth for the reconstruction of community infrastructure and social projects. This could be done via the issuance of "diaspora bonds". By diaspora bond, I mean not only bonding between the diaspora and the homeland, but more specifically a financial instrument for attracting investment from the diaspora. In the past diaspora bonds have been used by Israel and India to raise over $35 billion of development financing (see my article with Suhas Ketkar). Several countries - for example, Ethiopia, Nepal, the Philippines, Rwanda, and Sri Lanka - are considering (or have issued) diaspora bonds recently to bridge financing gaps. Besides patriotism, diaspora members are usually more interested than foreign investors in investing in the home country. Not only Haitians abroad, but also foreign individuals interested in helping Haiti, even charitable institutions, are likely to be interested in these bonds. Offering a reasonable interest rate - a 5% tax-free dollar interest rate, for example - could attract a large number of Haitian investors who are getting close to zero interest rate on their deposits. If 200,000 Haitians in the US, Canada and France were to invest $1,000 each in diaspora bonds, that would add up to $200 million. If these bonds were opened to friends of Haiti, including private charitable organizations, much larger sums can be raised. If the bond rating were enhanced to investment grade rating via guarantees from the multilateral and bilateral donors, then such bonds would even attract institutional investors.

By the way, if you are wondering whether Haitian immigrants are too poor to invest, consider this fact from the Current Population Survey of the US: nearly one-third of Haitian immigrants in the US belong to households that earned more than $60,000 in 2009. In comparison, less than 15% of the immigrants from Mexico, Dominican Republic and El Salvador in the US had that level of household income. A quarter of Haitian immigrants, especially women, are reportedly in the relatively higher paying health care and education sectors; only a small number of them are in the construction sector. Credit enhancement would be necessary for Haitian diaspora bonds. My preliminary calculation suggests that a $100 million grant from official (or private) donors to guarantee such bonds (say, for 10 years, on an annual rolling basis) could actually generate $600 million of additional funding for Haiti! Such a guarantee structure could reduce interest rates on these bonds from over 15% to below 5% at the going rates. Also marketing diaspora bonds in the US would require a temporary exemption from SEC regulations; perhaps a tough sell, but well worth it under these extraordinary circumstances.

On-the-ground report: Eustache Ouayoro, World Bank Country Manager for Haiti As I write this my hands still hesitate from remembering last week’s earthquake which cut short the lives and dreams of thousands of Haitians, but have also taught us a lesson in resilience, perseverance and hope. That fateful Tuesday, January 12th, started off as a bright, promising day for most of us, but ended up being possibly the worst day ever for Haiti, myself, and all of us working for its courageous people. Our office was bursting with excitement because we were expecting the visit of the Finance Minister, Ronald Boudain, to discuss accelerating the pace of disbursement of our projects so we could make a difference more quickly in the lives of so many Haitians. The Bank's country office in Haiti was fully energized for this work. I was mentally reviewing my conversation with the Minister while giving the final touches to a new issue of our newsletter when all hell broke loose. Out of nowhere the building started shaking furiously, as if the whole office was riding a concrete and steel wave. Nevertheless, it took me what seemed a long while to realize it was an earthquake. It was unimaginable. An earthquake in Haiti! As I was trying to maintain my balance in the middle of a mess of flying desks, glass shards and deafening sounds, I was saying to myself “this is disaster.” People who have lived through earthquakes before often say that an earthquake feels like an eternity, even though it lasts only a few seconds. This one felt longer than an eternity. All sorts of thoughts were going through my mind as the earth shook for an excruciating 35 seconds, the recorded duration of the 7.0 magnitude earthquake. Pondering to myself, I thought: why is this happening at a time when things are looking up in Haiti? The economy has been improving, communities across Haiti are making progress in key areas, and for the first time in many years, Haiti’s future is looking brighter. I thought about my family, my staff, about dying before accomplishing so many things. When the shaking stopped, we came outside and that’s when everything started to sink in. The first sight when you come out of our office is the proud six-story Hotel Montana. When we came outside it was just a pile of debris engulfed in a thick cloud of dust with badly injured people lying around. This is bad, I thought, as I saw good Samaritans running to the site with no equipment but their courage to try to save lives. Suddenly I felt depressed. Why — I wondered — is this country that has been so badly beaten been hit again? I was glad to be alive — and that my staff was alive — but at the same time I could not understand why I was one of the lucky survivors after realizing that so many people seemed to have died. But as I watched the impromptu rescue efforts around the Montana Hotel it became clear to me that the Haitian people are resilient and strong, that they are not afraid and their imagination is just another tool in their survival kit that gives them the ability to do things for themselves and their communities. In a flash, I understood that, now more than ever, we should be ready to continue to help the Haitian people. I’m ready to go back to my duties. We are ready to start the long –probably decades-long- reconstruction process, with new and innovative ideas to support Haiti's resilient people. We will continue involving Haitian communities in projects — which have yielded great results — and listen to them to figure out what needs to be done. This is where we can make a difference. Even though this has been a life-changing event for most of us, I’m ready to be part of the challenge of rebuilding Haiti.

We recently received an update from Bob Prouty, head of the Education for All: Fast Track Initiative Secretariat, with regards to the education situation in Haiti after the earthquake. From his email:  

According to the early assessments we have received, 95% of school buildings in the immediate Port-au-Prince area have been destroyed. Education teams on the ground from organizations like UNICEF, Plan International and CIDA are working together to get a better sense of this and will coordinate the assessment of Ministry capacity. The Ministry has created an emergency response group with which the Local Education Group will work. The situation on the ground at present remains desperate, and most education staff are still dealing with immediate urgencies, such as food and water. A number of heads of the DDE (decentralized Ministry of Education offices) were in Port-au-Prince at the time of the earthquake for a meeting and lost their lives in the earthquake. We do not yet have a full accounting of Ministry staff or of teaching staff, but it is clear that the education sector was particularly hard hit and that recovery will require extraordinary coordinated efforts by all partners working with the Haitians for many years to come.

  We'll be posting more updates about the situation in Haiti as they come in. For more information, see the Education for All — Fast Track Initiative website. Bob Prouty is head of the Education for All: Fast Track Initiative (EFA-FTI) Secretariat located in the World Bank in Washington DC. The EFA-FTI is a partnership of donors, developing countries and civil society groups whose purpose is to accelerate progress toward the 2015 Millennium Development Goal by which all children worldwide will be able to complete a primary school program of good quality. Photo: Children in the town of Petit-Goâve, Haiti, some 60 km from capital Port-au-Prince, run towards a UN helicopter. 20/Jan/2010. Petit-Go‚ve, Haiti. UN Photo/Logan Abassi.

Yesterday on The Huffington Post, World Bank Haiti Country Director Yvonne Tsikata shared some of the work being done by the Bank in Haiti and a few thoughts on the Bank's larger, long-term commitment to the country:  

Going forward, we would like to put special emphasis on the capacity generated by community-driven development projects, where people at the local level decide their priorities. We have supported a number of such initiatives going on in Haiti at the moment that have proven to be particularly successful on the basis of community involvement. This will be critical in the reconstruction. Just to give an example, by May 2009 our community-driven initiative had completed 549 projects, primarily for agricultural support and other infrastructure -- including grain mills, water pumps, and local roads -- as well as income-generating activities. It provided technical support to 4,032 community-based organizations in rural areas, benefiting around 763,000 people in poor rural areas (or 57 percent of the population of the rural communities covered by the program).

  Check out the full piece on The Huffington Post for more information on the Bank's work in Haiti and to engage in the discussion happening there. Yvonne Tsikata is the World Bank Country Director for the Caribbean covering Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago, in the Latin America and the Caribbean Region.

I visited Haiti just before Christmas with Nik Win Myint from the WDR team. I talked to community groups in some of the slums that have been most ravaged by drugs and gang-related violence—Cite de Soleil, Martissant, Bel-air.

    Visiting a poultry farm in Haiti. Photos © Henriot Nader

The people I met had great hope for the future—after decades of a debilitating cycle of poverty, violence and state inaction, they finally felt that things were improving. The young men in the pictures here had just started their own farm for chicken eggs, funded through small grants from the government.  "Security is better. The police are better. We are still worried about the future, but this is the first time the state has done something for us. People in this community just need the chance to work, to get training" they said. Who knows how many of the people I talked to are still alive.  Tens of thousands have died in the earthquake, and those who survive have lost family members, their houses, their possessions, their jobs.  This would have been a tragedy at any time—it is more so at a period when the country seemed to be regaining hope and some confidence in the future.

     Nik Win Myint (left) and I in a community bakery.

International aid is pouring into the country—and the immediate needs are humanitarian, to care for the hurt and desperation amongst survivors. Yet watching the faces on my TV screen and thinking about those I spoke to just a few weeks ago, I'm also struck by how important it is that this aid gives Haitians the chance to regain the hope and dignity which they were claiming before the earthquake struck. This will mean the international community sticking around for long enough after the initial crisis not only to feed and treat victims and help rebuild destroyed infrastructure, but also to get Haiti's fragile economy and institutions back on their feet. Not just giving people clothes and temporary shelter, but making sure they have an income at the end of it to start to rebuild their own lives. Not just rebuilding hospitals, schools and police stations, but making sure that the government has the means to run them. Not just rebuilding houses, but making sure that the poor do not have to live in the most vulnerable locations to natural disasters because they have no other access to land or property. Haiti needed more aid even before the earthquake—with gaps in funding for job creation, for agriculture and to support continued change for the better in the police and the justice system. Hedi Annabi, the UN SRSG who died in the earthquake, was struggling to persuade donors around the world to provide this funding. It would double the tragedy if this support is not now provided—for this is what is needed not only to paper over the current damage but to make Haitians less vulnerable to a similar disaster in future. As the BBC did this week, it is good to ask "What will happen in one year, or five years? Will this be the opportunity to remake Haiti or will it be a lost opportunity?"

    Streetsigns prepared by a youth group to improve their neighborhood.

As the Bank and others prepare their response plans for Haiti, it is worthwhile taking a moment to stress the importance of media and communication in the aftermath of the disaster, as well as in the more long-term post-crisis reconstruction period.   In both post-conflict and natural disaster situations, donors focus on filling people’s basic needs: shelter, sustenance, medical care. But there is another basic need that people have in emergencies: information. People need to find out if their loved ones are safe, and if so, how they can communicate with them. They need to find out where they can access basic services. They need to find out if it is safe to go back to their homes, and if not, where they can stay. And in the longer term, they need to reconnect with others in society, to come together to rebuild a nation.  

Unfortunately, in many post-conflict and disaster situations, the media and communication sector is one of the last to be addressed in systematic fashion. Typically, communication interventions are inserted awkwardly into the reconstruction process, with purely tactical and/or expedient choices taking precedence over strategic decision-making. While this is to be expected in the immediate aftermath of a crisis, it tends to persist even well into the sustained period of reconstruction and recovery.   As assessment teams begin to roll out and long-term plans are laid, donors have a chance to think strategically about the role of media and communications in Haiti’s recovery and longer-term development. This means not merely setting up emergency public information units, but thinking about the long-term impact of media such as emergency radio stations; how these stations and other crisis media can or should form a bridge to a future revitalized media sector; and how a revitalized media sector can support good governance and development for Haiti in the years to come.   This may seem like a lot to digest, especially now while people are still dealing with the terrible reality of death and destruction. But donors are already considering long-term development issues as they prepare assessment and short-term stabilization teams. This is an area that should not be overlooked. For more information, see last year's CommGAP paper "Towards a New Model: Media and Communication in Post-Conflict and Fragile States"   Photo Credit: United Nations Development Programme (on Flickr)

World Bank natural disaster expert Francis Ghesquiere will be leading the Bank contingent of a multilateral team — including staff from the UN and the InterAmerican Development Bank — that will go to Haiti in the next few weeks to conduct damage and reconstruction assessments in every major sector, including health, education, water, sanitation, electricity, and roads. Below, you'll find a short video interview with Francis Ghesquiere where he speaks about how assessments are done after natural disasters like the Haiti earthquake: "As we go about the reconstruction of Haiti, we will have to make sure the infrastructure that is rebuilt is resistant to earthquakes, but also to hurricanes and other hazards."  

  More information about the assessment team can be found on the feature story: Bank Team Prepares for Damage Assessment, Recovery Plan. Francis Ghesquiere is the regional coordinator for disaster risk management for the Latin America and Caribbean Region at the World Bank. His team supports client countries in identifying and reducing their exposure to adverse natural events.

In Indonesia, a national disaster management agency was set up in 2008 to serve as a guardian of disaster risk management. The agency's important role was clear in the aftermath of a West Sumatra earthquake in 2009.

The unprecedented earthquake in Haiti and the massive destruction it caused reminds me of the significant destruction that resulted after the Aceh tsunami five years ago. The Haiti earthquake hit the country’s capital, Port-au-Prince, which is the center of government and economic activities. The combination of enormous damage on facilities and infrastructure, the collapse of the national government function, and the lack of preparedness and experience make it inevitable that the people of Haiti will rely on the international community for guidance and coordination. This situation is different from what happened in Aceh after the 2004 tsunami. At that time, although the devastation was also severe and affected a large part of Aceh, it did not affect the country’s capital city. The Government of Indonesia, which is located in Jakarta, remained fully functional and was able to coordinate the emergency response, disaster assessment, and reconstruction effort that followed. The government was also able to set up reconstruction agency in only a matter of months after the disaster. Looking back to those years, it seems that the Indonesia Government has since built a lot of capacity and gained more confidence in handling disasters and conducting post-disaster assessments. After the tsunami, the government’s effort to conduct a damage and loss assessment was largely supported by international partners. The tsunami assessment was a marking point for the government in utilising an established methodology and more systematic approach to assess damage and losses, as developed by the UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). When another major disaster happened in Jogyakarta in 2006 (pdf), the Government proved to be more proficient in conducting the assessment and still continues to develop the country’s capacity in disaster management, a skill which is very much needed in a country such as Indonesia that is prone to disasters. Disaster management laws were issued in 2007 and a national disaster management agency (BNPB) was set up in 2008 as a guardian of disaster risk management in Indonesia. BNPB’s role in responding to disasters was strongly demonstrated in the West Sumatra earthquake in 2009. As the appointed national agency for disaster management, it provided the overall coordination and worked very closely with provincial and local governments. The capacity of the BNPB to lead the assessment and their knowledge on the assessment method was evident. Clear guidance was provided to the team on the field situation, response plans, and on the expectations of government. Smaller group meetings based on different sectors were set up to have focused discussions on data and situation analysis. The local governments also made a huge contribution by providing and compiling data in a short time period from the various areas across the affected province. Strong knowledge, commitment, enthusiasm, and hard work are obviously exposed in the process. Being involved in the previous disaster has made me realize how well the capacity of the government has evolved during the last five years. It is evident that the Government of Indonesia has learned important lessons from past disasters in how to better respond when disasters strike, and it is continuously evolving – perhaps not yet to a maximal point, but has already reached higher ground. It also seems that the fruit of extensive efforts are now ripening. As I praise the Indonesian government, and as I remember how costly and destructive a disaster can be, I think it might be helpful to remind them that work still needs to be completed on mitigating future disasters – particularly as the country is located in the hot spot zone for earthquake. As the growing consensus says, “Disasters perhaps cannot be prevented, but the disaster’s damage and losses can be.” Photo courtesy John Orford under a Creative Commons license.