Dear Colleagues, I was pleased to see the message from Robert Davies, Chief Executive Officer, International Business Leaders Forum (IBLF) and the material prepared by IBLF and the International Tourism Partnership in response to the coastal disaster in Asia. I like the clarity of their paper in identifying the three phases of the crisis: (1) Rescue (2) Relief, and (3) Recovery. I think this is a good way to think about the crisis and emergency.
But there is something sadly missing, something wrong. I cannot put my finger on exactly what it is. Maybe it is because tourism often flourishes in beautiful places in little enclaves surrounded by grinding poverty. Maybe it is because the business model for tourism success is high prices, high profits and leave very little of value in the local economy and the host country. Maybe it is because tourism is often associated with a certain level of sexual entertainment that we don't often talk about. Somehow, something is missing. So while I am glad to see leaders in the international business community and the tourism industry writing about the crisis, I have a concern which is not easy to explain. Rescue and relief has been done very well. Not perfect, but an impressive local and international response. From my perspective, I see a level of expertise and commitment in the international emergency response community that is very encouraging. The large international NGOs have a lot of experience and good people. Organizations like UNHCR do a wonderful job in crisis situations. Local organizations and ordinary people in a crisis do quite extraordinary things. And when the military is used for emergency logistics instead of dropping bombs and doing destruction, they also are amazing. In fact, its almost worth having the military budget bill just so that they can perform in these emergency situations. On balance I have to say that local and international response to handle rescue and relief has been extraordinary. But recovery is another matter. How does the tsunami crisis rank in the global development arena? How does one go about having success in development around the world and success in the long term post tsunami recovery phase? I am an optimist about what is possible, but very pessimistic about what will actually happen. Already there are the first reports of scams, rip-offs and obscene profiteering that usually emerge quite quickly in any crisis, and this is no exception. In terms of obscene profiteering, the reports of child abductions are most sickening. To maximize profit from exploitation of children, free children is about as good as it gets! Sick. But exploiting children is big business. Scams and rip-offs will happen, and most organizations are not well equipped for transparency and accountability that would make it much more difficult for scammers and rip-off artists to operate. As the recovery phase begins, there are a lot of questions, and few easy answers. What is the impact of the SE Asia's tsunami crisis on the rest of the world? Will resources for recovery in the tsunami crisis be incremental or will they merely be diversions of resources from other critical programs. What is the impact going to be, for example, on the global health and HIV-AIDS crisis. We are not seeing many images of the AIDS crisis in the world media at the moment, yet the death toll in three weeks related to AIDS is numerically about the scale of the tsunami deaths to date. Again ... in three weeks, death from AIDS related causes is estimated to be around 150,000. Will the tsunami crisis sensitize the world to the plight of poor people? Will it get more people to ask questions about poverty and the failure of world leadership and the development community to make progress in the elimination of abject poverty. Around the world, maybe half of the population is terribly poor ... some 3 billion people. Around the world, a lot of countries and their governments are essentially bankrupt and therefore unable to deliver any services that rich countries now routinely expect governments to provide. It really is a mess. In many parts of the world, poor people can more easily get hold of a gun than a good meal! What the rescue and relief performance does show is that amazing things can be done, and done very quickly. It would be wonderful if the tsunami recovery process was done in a way to demonstrate that recovery and development can be successful. The tsunami recovery can be done well. But history suggests that the recovery or development phase will be either excessively overfunded or underfunded, and the priorities determined in the worst possible way. This need not be. It can be done well, but it requires a different approach from what has usually been done. Success in development is unlikely to be best when it is driven by the prevailing development mindset of the international donors with government the driver of recovery implementation, or the international "welfare" model where every service is a "right", or the "market" model which mainly encourages "anything goes" greed. The most promising way to implement the recovery stage is a community centric approach that takes full advantage of local resources and possibilities, and is culturally appropriate. In community centric development, the priority is community progress with external investment as beneficial as it can be and used so that people are facilitated to do what they can do. Equity needs to be addressed, and that can probably best be done by a loan regime of assistance rather than grants. A single thematic focus is probably wrong, because each community is going to have a different set of needs. And external investment should be brought in on terms that are advantageous to the local community. This is where the international business community, foreign direct investment and government controls have historically failed, and the repeat of past errors should be avoided. Unfortunately, it is not clear that the international business and investment community really is committed to the idea of investment in combination with a value chain that makes local communities economically successful. I wish I was wrong, but the facts seem to suggest that corporate stockholders are far more important than corporate citizenship and host community citizens. What is the goal of recovery? First, to start moving back to a working local economy. But it should be much more. Merely to re-establish the level of poverty previously enjoyed by the communities is not enough. Recovery and development should facilitate something more ambitious. I like to think this is something that is going to happen. And I also like to think that this is what should be happening with development everywhere. So back to the beginning. I am delighted to have the leaders of the business community thinking about the tsunami disaster, and want to see them engaged in the operation of a productive economy. But I also hope that they can be a big part of community development success, rather than being, more than they should, a part of the problem of endemic community poverty. Sincerely, Peter B ____________ Peter Burgess Tr-Ac-Net / WISPforD / CCCDO in NewYork Tel: 212 772 6918 Web: www.afrifund.com Email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Databasehttp://www.afrifund.com/wiki/index.pcgi?page=DBOrganizationS Blog: http://taame.blogspot ------------ ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: <http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
