Date: 2024-04-28 Page is: DBtxt003.php L0913-TVM-MMW-000029
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TrueValueMetrics ... Peter Burgess Manuscript
Making Management Work for Relief and Development |
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Chapter 29
Emergency Rescue and Relief |
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Humanitarian Relief is Big Business
Relief is much bigger than development The relief and development sector has become more relief than development. This is a very bad outcome, and one of the reasons why so little in the relief and development sector is sustainable, and so little has durable value. In a humanitarian crisis, it is difficult to back away from “saving lives” to doing those things that will set the stage for progress in the future. This is understandable, and laudable ... but still a reason why development has become lower priority in so many places faced with crisis. Donors are able to avoid soft questions about why so little is being done for development, but are much less able to avoid the hard questions associated with fund crisis response when major newspapers and the TV news have death and destruction in the headlines. Rescue and relief versus development Relief and development are two very different activities. Relief is clearly needed when there has been a disaster, but it is NOT development. It merely helps to keep people alive and to some extent mitigate the value destruction that has taken place. Development is about making progress from a rather unsatisfactory socio-economic status quo to something better, using resources in ways that create incremental socio-economic value. Natural disasters There are four types of natural disaster that have been in the news in recent years: (1) famine; (2) tsunami; (3) earthquake; and, (4) weather. The international community has created humanitarian response mechanisms to respond to natural disaster and mitigate the effects. This books refers to the relief and development sector rather than the development sector, because in large part relief gets more attention than development, to the detriment of sustainable socio-economic progress. The growth of relief as a component of the relief and development sector is a symptom of failure. In all but the most severe situations, natural events should be capable of being handled by local resources, with modest international intervention, but that is not how things have developed. And there are man-made disasters Man made disasters are also in the news. There are many, many examples with war and violence heading the list. War and violence causes chain reactions that impact people in all sorts of ways. In my own case, I have seen a lot of the results of population displacement both into refugee status and also as internally displaced people (IDPs), and I am disgusted that this can happen to human beings. Why are these horrible results allowed to happen in a world that we like to call civilized. But when we look at the cause of war and violence, it is largely caused by greed, and the rich and powerful exerting their might to have even more and to diminish the possibilities of others to challenge their situation. It should be noted that violence is very widespread, and facilitated by easy access to weaponry of all sorts and ammunition. Violence is a part of too many political systems, and too much of economic activity as well, especially activities that have been made illegal such as the illegal drug trade, prostitution and human trafficking. Planning for emergency relief The international relief and development sector probably does better planning in the emergency relief mode that it does for development. In an emergency people are dying and the procedural red tape becomes less of a problem. Much more effort can go into planning physical activities and getting the resources in the right place to do things that are useful. There are amazing stories of incredible performance by emergency workers. There is a lot to learn from the performance of the organizations engaged in emergency response. Identify, Budget, Do, Account The High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) is probably my favorite UN agency. They do a lot of good things very quickly and with some outstanding results. They have some excellent staff that know what they are doing, and are able to identify what needs to be done almost instantly, get a basic budget to get going, do critical things to keep people alive, and then account for the way funds were used. On one assignment, I was asked to critique the UNHCR way of doing things. The expectation was that I would propose that UNHCR used a more effective (cumbersome) planning process more in keeping with the other UN agencies. Rather I suggested that the UNHCR process would be better applied into the other agencies. Someone pointed out to me that UNHCR had purchased gas at some $2.00 a gallon, and that UNDP was in the process of procuring gas at $1.25 a gallon, considerably cheaper. The key fact missing was that UNHCR had arranged to have their gas available 24 hours into the crisis, and UNDP still had not got any gas into the area almost four months later. For fully four months UNDP had been using UNHCR gas because UNHCR gas was the only gas available. Needless to say, UNHCR is not perfect. They have been challenged by all sorts of pressures from the local and international system, but in spite of everything, I consider them to be an amazing organization. Accounting and accountability The accounting and accountability in the relief arena ranges from pretty good to very bad. When I was working closely with UNHCR, the systems they were using had many of the characteristics that I look for in good management information systems, including strong feedback and processes to quickly learn from experience. But most of the other organizations seem to have weak accounting and almost no meaningful accountability, and little capacity for institutional learning. Three major natural disasters that have taken place in the past three years: (1) the tsunami in South Asia; (2) the Katrina and Rita hurricanes in the USA; and, (3) the earthquake in Pakistan. In all three cases the global public responded with great generosity, especially in the case of the tsunami. An enormous amount of money flowed into the relief and development sector ... into all sorts of organizations, and in very large amounts. Nobody knows how much or how little flowed out to do the work needed to provide help to needy beneficiaries. People who reported back to me from various places in the tsunami affected area were angry at how so much money could do so little ... they reported on the number of new white Toyota Land Cruisers that quickly arrived on the scene, and relief visitors doing surveys and preparing reports ... but actual fund flows to beneficiaries were not so much to be seen. Friends told me of how effective the Indian army seems to have been in all sorts of remote areas ... and doing very worthwhile practical work ... army engineers rebuilding bridges and helping to fix fishing boats. But I was also told of how funds intended for tsunami affected areas in Sri Lanka were allocated to projects in Colombo. Money is fungible ... and without good accounting and a system for accountability, essentially anything goes. I have not been able to find out much about how several billion dollars that were paid into the relief and development sector organizations in connection with the tsunami were actually used ... nobody is doing the overall accounting. After some very public announcements, I thought that PriceWaterhouseCoopers was going to help with this, but I was wrong about that ... seems it was more PR than serious help. There does not seem to be a single major organization that has the sort of information that allows for a full accounting for expenditures, the activities funded, and the results achieved. Value destruction in disaster The socio-economic impact of natural disaster is huge. The value of the relief assistance that comes in after a disaster is substantial, but tiny relative to the terrible value destruction that takes place as a result of major natural disaster. Putting things back together consumes a vast amount of scarce resources, and slows down the progress that otherwise would be made. I have visited a number of places where natural disasters have struck ... years later the scars are everywhere. Some buildings get rebuilt, but many do not. Each building that is not rebuilt probably has a family financial disaster, or worse, associated with it. Much of this never gets into the record, and is forgotten. But it does not appear that important lessons are drawn from disaster. We are more and more living in areas prone to disaster ... we live closer to the coast ... we live more and more on flood plains ... we have major cities growing on earthquake fault lines ... and so on. And we have man-made disasters War is a terrible man-made disaster, and associated with tremendous value destruction. Value destruction takes place at all levels, both in the destruction of physical infrastructure and in the killing and maiming of people and families. When the value analysis is done, man-made disasters like war destroy value for a huge part of society ... but not every part of society. There is enough fortune making in war for the value of war to be propagated and believed ... enough to make rational analysis about war seem wimpy. There is a need to stop bad things ... but offensive war is rarely the best way to do it. I am reminded of the efforts of Mohatma Ghandi in India that eventually ended the British rule over India, and the impact of Martin Luther King in the USA that helped make progress in US Civil Rights. And I think that we can do a lot to stop bad things by being active in supporting good things. People do not kill themselves in suicide bombings because they are seeing good things happening all around them ... but because there is a lot of stuff that has made them mad. Sectarian violence does not happen because society is happy ... but for some other reason. Somewhere there is greed ... and somewhere somebody, or some group, is going to become rich and powerful because of the mayhem. But Ghandi and Martin Luther King were bigger than guns and bullets ... and they won. We have to do the same in the face of war, violence and insecurity, and stop man-made disasters. How to do emergency relief better The first stage of disaster is rescue. In this first stage, it is reasonable to mobilize at the very fastest pace possible, and to do everything that is possible to save life, and minimize human injury and trauma. But this stage does not last long ... just hours or at most a couple of days. After the immediate rescue phase, the work should be managed so that it is done in the best possible way ... and at least cost. This is possible, up to a point, using the back of an envelope and prior experience, but it is much better done with decent information ... management information. Some steps have to be taken so that the idea of good accounting in the relief and emergency environment is not outright opposed by experienced staff in the field. They complain noisily, and quite reasonably, when they do not have enough resources to do what needs to be done, but the basics of management information needed so that resources are allocated optimally is not done. I argue that the failure to have decent accounting and a good understanding of what things cost is a part of the reason that they do not have the resources needed ... there are links between the accounting and the allocation of resources both this time round and the next time round. How to mitigate value destruction from disaster As a society we are building and living more and more in places that are prone to disaster ... on flood plains, along unprotected coastlines, in areas prone to forest fires, and so forth. Doing less of this would be sensible. Being prepared is also a sensible thing to do ... at the family level, and at the community level, area level and national level. Having quick access to immediately needed resources is a big help. Some disasters should never happen There are a lot of disasters that should never happen. Most important of these are disasters associated with war and violence, and those associated with famine. War and violence is a result of societal failure ... local, national and international. War and violence is an unacceptable outcome, a failure of the relief and development sector and leadership at all levels. Much more thought should be given to why war and violence might happen, and steps taken to change the underlying societal situation. This is not “conflict resolution” but conflict avoidance. It is sadly missing in what one can see of present day international geopolitical dialog. Conflict avoidance is not easy ... but it is important. Conflict can arise very rapidly and it is tough to keep in check. I have seen arising conflict in a number of situations over a long period of time. In 1978 around 2,500 immigrants from the Comores working in Madagascar had their throats slit. This all took place in one night, around Majunga. I was in Madagascar some years later. An Asian trader killed a Malagache child who was getting in the way in the store ... and almost instantly riots broke out all over the country. Asian properties were burned. People feared a repeat of the 1978 massacre. Asian women and children left the country. France coordinated an evacuation of the expatriate community. Police and army deployed and were assisted logistically by the Asian traders ... And calm eventually returned. The lesson learned is that terrible outcomes can happen very quickly ... that people need to be paying attention to societies grievances and seeing to it that there is some semblance of fairness. Crop failures are going to happen, but famine should never happen. The world has food resources that are embarrassingly large, yet global leadership has not been able to figure out how famine can be avoided. Both national and international leadership must take blame ... and the global public should not be tolerant of this abysmal failure of the international system. Failed Food Security I was in Ethiopia and around the Sahel in the famine of the 1980s. It was not pleasant ... it is something one does not easily erase from memory. How to avoid a recurrence of famine was very much on the relief and development agenda, and food security was a priority. Some progress was made in getting information that would alert the relief and development community to potential famine risks ... the Famine Early Warning System (FEWS) is part of this initiative ... but relatively little was done in a tangible practical way to make it easy to move from knowing about the problem to doing something about it. “I know I am hungry ... but please, help me to get something to eat”. The relief and development sector, national and international has done a rather poor job of solving the hunger and malnutrition problem. We know there is famine and hunger, but most of the time, practical and timely help is not on the agenda. The food and agriculture sector in the “north” has been a great success over a very long time, but agricultural progress has not helped everyone everywhere to eat enough. Some places in the “south” have more productive agriculture because of the so-called “green revolution”, but there are still very many millions (perhaps nearly 2 billion people) who are poor and hungry. This is a systemic problem with multiple dimensions, but it should be possible to solve in modern times ... except that powerful interests could well prefer that the present status quo is maintained because, simply, this is a very profitable situation. It should not be too difficult to get a lot more management information about agricultural performance and food flows ... and to identify what it is that is making it so difficult to get meaningful food security. Without having the hard facts, I would expect the constraints are largely due to the critical failure of community level economics, and an inability of “south” government to be of material assistance, and an unwillingness of the “north” to be engaged in an effective way prior to it being “politically” advantageous ... that is until after there are images of dying people on the TV. Military resources in disaster situations Military resources are of great value in disaster situation. The military are better equipped than most civilian agencies to do physical work in very difficult circumstances, and they have a command and control structure that enables them to do the work in an organized manner. In the South Asian tsunami disaster, the performance of the Indian Army in helping coastal communities was very effective, including a lot of temporary bridge building and repairing and moving fishing boats. In the Pakistan earthquake, the Pakistan Army mobilized resources and provide physical help rapidly in remote areas. In refugee camps in Africa, the US Army has been deployed to get water organized. The military are good at doing physical things ... the army engineers routinely do amazing things in difficult conditions. They are excellent in crisis, and they can mitigate disaster effectively. But the army is too costly for development building. |
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