François Grünewald, Honorary Chairman of Groupe URD
As is all too common, the period between mid-December and mid-January is a risky time for crisis managers who want to take a holiday. On the morning of 26 December 2004, we woke up to images of a major disaster: an earthquake measuring more than 9 degrees on the Richter scale on the Arakan faults had triggered a major tsunami. The first images came from Thailand: the tourist beaches of Phuket ravaged, hotels destroyed, boats swept away, villages razed to the ground. Information about the extent of the damage in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, the Gao region in India, then the Maldives and even Somalia began to arrive. We were facing one of the greatest disasters in recent history: between 200,000 and 300,000 dead, colossal damage to economic infrastructures and coastal ecosystems. International generosity was unprecedented, as the area was well known to tourists, while the mobilisation of local citizens and national institutions responsible for dealing with the disaster was accelerating daily.
Groupe URD had just completed a major evaluation in Latin America after Hurricane Mitch and the earthquakes in San Salvador. We began to compile all the experience we had gained in responding to hurricanes into a compendium of lessons learnt from 4 years of work, which was published a few days after the disaster. In the years that followed, we carried out more than 10 missions in the region: evaluations, research, capitalising on experience, work that has continued with evaluations of the response to the 2006 earthquake in Yog-Jakarta, multidisciplinary research on resilience in Indonesia, feedback work (RETEX) following the 2018 tsunami in Palao, as well as the deployment of our approach to supporting risk management and disaster response in Haiti, Nepal, Lebanon and Turkey.
The mobilisation of financial resources from international civil society and governments in the wake of the Tsunami triggered a complex evaluation process. On the French side, the rather original Post-Tsunami Interministerial Delegation (DIPT), responsible for coordinating the mobilisation of considerable resources for the French government outside its traditional area of intervention, commissioned an evaluation. Parliamentary bodies (Senate, National Assembly) set up fact-finding missions (L’aide française aux victimes du tsunami en Indonésie Blum report for the Senate) while the Cour des Comptes produced a report entitled ‘L’aide française aux victimes du tsunami du 26/12/2004’. Alongside these institutional evaluations, a host of other exercises were carried out by universities (Paris XII-Créteil), donors (Fondation de France) and NGOs (Collectif Enfants Isolés d’Asie, etc.).
At international level, too, numerous evaluations have been carried out by the UN (OCHA, WHO, FAO, UNICEF, WFP), bilateral and multilateral donors (European Union, IFI), NGOs and association networks. In response to this ‘evaluation tsunami’, and based on the model of the joint multi-donor evaluation in Rwanda, the Tsunami Evaluation Coalition was set up in order to better coordinate evaluation efforts, reduce as far as possible the burden of these evaluations on players on the ground and ensure cross-learning. Finally, a number of the affected countries themselves, notably Indonesia, Thailand and India, have mobilised their own Courts of Audit, auditors and controllers to ensure the necessary accountability and control in relation to their populations and aid actors.
1. CHARACTERISTICS OF DISASTERS AND THE RESPONSE
The dynamics of the disasters were very different, depending on the distance from the epicentre, the shape of the sea shelf which produced the strength, height and speed of the wave, the population density and the spatial organisation of the affected areas. So we’re talking about multiple disasters, all the more so because, as is often the case, there were additional tremors on the Nicobar Islands, and even more seriously, in March 2005, on the island of Nias.
Although the Arakan fault system is known to be a very active tectonic zone, never before had such a strong earthquake been recorded. The tsunami that followed the tremor was without doubt the most devastating of all known tsunamis, affecting a very large area.
The quality and capacity of local and national institutions were vital from the very first hours of the crisis. The Thai, Indonesian, Indian and Sri Lankan civil protection services, as well as the military, did a considerable amount of work despite their limited resources given the scale of the disaster. In Banda Aceh, volunteers from the Indonesian medical services did an extraordinary job, coming from all over the archipelago. But in general, national disaster management systems were quickly overwhelmed by the scale of the disaster.
International aid was deployed very quickly, and many countries sent civil protection teams, often equipped for search and rescue. Displaced people’s camps have sprung up over a large part of the affected area, with the challenge of setting up shelters for people so that they can be provided with food and water. The United Nations system quickly got into action, with all the humanitarian agencies responding and OCHA and UNDP coordinating the aid effort. Bilateral aid in the aftermath of the tsunami was significant, with different levels of commitment, mainly through NGOs and UN agencies, but also with a strong component of funding for national institutions, initially through short-term funds and then rapidly through longer-term approaches.
2. A MULTIDIMENSIONAL RESPONSE
2.1. Initial response
The dispatch of ‘search and clear’ teams, including dog teams, showed the limits of this type of operation when there are no solid dwellings of a certain height. At Banda Ache, there were only a few infrastructures over two storeys high, which were not affected. When there is little risk of people being trapped under debris due to the low height of the buildings, sending in highly specialised teams, who must be in the area within hours of the disaster in order to be effective, was not relevant to this specific situation in the areas affected by the Tsunami, where light housing prevailed.
2.2. Health
The epidemiology of disasters, based on the analysis of the very specific characteristics of the impacts of disasters on health, shows that these vary greatly depending on the type of disaster. An earthquake kills and crushes, a cyclone injures mainly because of flying objects, and a tsunami drowns and injures. Heavy disaster surgery to treat broken bodies is necessary in one case, but much less so in the other, where lighter surgery and a lot of ‘first aid’ are required. The hospital ships deployed by France, the United States and Australia mainly dealt with wounds and a few deliveries.
On the other hand, a tsunami, like an earthquake, can result in a large number of deaths, many of which will be found later (due to the ebb of the wave in the case of a tsunami, or the efforts made to clear the debris in the case of an earthquake), which means that there will be a major need for forensic medicine and psychological and legal support for those who are unable to find the bodies of the deceased, and therefore to grieve.
The psychosocial activities that have been put in place for the local population, as well as for self-help workers who are also often victims, have been important and should not be forgotten. It is important to remember, however, that beyond discussion groups and other debriefings, it is necessary to work on these delicate issues on the basis of a real understanding of local care systems and cultural references for trauma management.
Once the direct health impacts of the Tsunami had been managed, it was very quickly necessary to return to the management of traditional public health issues: contagious diseases, particularly those linked to water, chronic diseases, vector-borne diseases (malaria, dengue fever, etc.). As is often the case, there are major concerns about the risk of epidemics, but the WHO talks of a ‘myth’ of post-disaster epidemics…[1].
2.3. Habitat
Throughout the coastal strip, from the high-water mark to more than 2 kilometres inland, depending on the coastal profile, the damage to housing was massive: fishermen’s houses washed away, coastal towns partly razed to the ground, basic infrastructure washed away. Community infrastructure (schools, town halls, administrative buildings, warehouses, hospitals still standing, etc.) were transformed into collective shelters to cope with the onset of the rainy season and provide a minimum of protection. The urgent need for housing became apparent, and a wide variety of programmes were put in place, with very different implementation methods and technical choices.
The distribution of tents and tarpaulins to shelter the homeless led to the creation of dozens of camps in the few days after the Tsunami. Months later, most of the tented camps were still there, while the presence of displaced people in public institutions became more permanent. Rebuilding housing took time, and temporary solutions tended to become permanent. The logistical, administrative, legal, land and building materials supply constraints (with prices rapidly spiralling out of control) and implementation timescales varied widely. Some players wanted to go straight from tents to sustainable houses, but found themselves blocked by the regulations of certain humanitarian donors who did not want their emergency funds to be used to build something sustainable, and in particular to lay cement foundations of a certain size on the ground. The number of so-called ‘transitional’ buildings increased, and they too changed from ‘transitional’ to ‘sustainable’.
As soon as development funds began to flow in, another issue became architectural and urban planning choices. This gave rise to a number of tensions that sometimes had a major impact on the programmes: Tensions between respect for building cultures and the imposition of house models designed by architects disconnected from the area, tensions between urban planning approaches that took account of the context and the technocratic plans of certain administrations, tensions between the imposition of having reconstruction programmes carried out by companies, supposedly in order to move quickly, and programmes to support self-building, which were slower, but ensured that the houses were genuinely owned by the inhabitants, who became masons and carpenters, etc.
2.4. Water and sanitation
Many of the areas affected by the tsunami on 24 December already had water supply problems, due to the geology of the coastal areas and the presence of salty groundwater. These problems were exacerbated by the wave, which polluted many wells, filling them with debris and causing underground pollution of the water tables. On the one hand, bottles had to be distributed, and on the other, tanker transport systems had to be set up fairly quickly from water sources further inland and unaffected. The dispatch of surface water treatment plants proved to be very important. In the tsunami zone, there have been regular cases of cholera, which calls for particular vigilance. While the ‘major post-disaster epidemic’ has never been seen as such, it is clear that in post-disaster contexts where there is no longer a functional waste management system, the issue of water quality very quickly became acute. It took a long time to set up a waste collection system, given the scale of the quantities involved, and in the meantime, incineration has become the most common practice, with other types of environmental and health impact.
2.5. Food and economic security
Waves, like high-intensity cyclones, have a significant but varied impact on economic and food security: shops devastated, granaries ravaged, fields flooded and trees pollarded. In the case of the tsunami, the damage occurred over a limited strip of land, which meant that the entire hinterland was able to organise itself as a source of supplies.
While food aid was essential in the early days, it very quickly became necessary to start working on processes to revive the economy, in particular through financial transfers. The ‘cash for work’ programmes set up in the first few weeks to help inject food and clear debris from coastal areas were gradually transformed into ‘cash for work’ programmes to inject liquidity.
We also saw the importance of money transfer mechanisms such as Money Link and others, which enabled major economic injections from diasporas and families living outside the tsunami zone.
As international images showed many damaged boats, many support programmes for the fishing industry were set up, but with a lot of waste, as boats imported or built locally in one part of the affected area but unsuitable for another area, where the water regime is different, often remained docked or, in most cases, were resold or destroyed to salvage their materials.
2.6. Disaster preparedness and prevention
A lack of risk awareness and disaster preparedness soon became apparent. Several countries, including France, undertook to support this sector, on the one hand by investing in research to gain a better understanding of seismic risks, to launch international cooperation on tsunami knowledge and warning (with UNESCO) and to support the countries in the region in strengthening their civil protection systems. In this way, France has supported the strengthening of Indonesia’s civil protection ‘emergency cells’ (BRP) and the Red Cross system.
3. LESSONS LEARNED
Many of the following lessons cover the emergency phase, reconstruction/rehabilitation and disaster prevention/preparedness. Given a number of similarities, they are partly relevant to the situation in Mayotte.
Lesson 1: ‘Too much money to use quickly is bad for common sense’.
In high-profile crises, such as the Tsunami, considerable sums of money are mobilised and have to be used quickly ‘for the emergency’. Faced with this large and certainly useful windfall, we have seen a decline in the ingenuity of those involved and a standardisation of programmes. Large sums have to be spent quickly, which is detrimental to tailor-made approaches. This entails a major risk of standardisation and a failure to adapt programmes to local realities.
Most of the players in the field have complained about the pressure exerted by institutional donors: budgets are too short to be used, action methods are sometimes imposed, more and more reports have to be written, different reporting formats are used each time, and so on. During the Tsunami, the high but not excessive levels of French funding enabled programmes to be set up that focused mainly on quality rather than quantity. Operators were not under immediate pressure to spend funds quickly, and a number of them were able to develop projects that were both original and participatory, focusing on tailoring rather than ‘mass production’.
The strong mobilisation of private funds, which are much more flexible, prepared to take risks on innovative approaches, and to accept greater finesse and diversity in the response, should make it possible to limit this pressure during emergency phases. We also need to ensure that such sums donated in an emergency can be used over time to meet the longer-term – but equally important – needs of reconstruction.
Lesson 2: Poor diagnosis: understanding constraints and capacities is just as important as analysing needs
Many mistakes linked to the fact that humanitarian action and post-disaster reconstruction generally take place in complex cultural and (geo)political contexts could have been avoided if the analysis of situations had been better carried out, thereby reducing the considerable additional costs of these mistakes. The explanation given is twofold: there is little time (in the case of natural disasters, you have to move quickly and sometimes leave your base in a matter of hours), and few resources (‘donors don’t fund exploratory missions’). When you want to move too quickly, there is a great risk that many players will quickly commit themselves to responses that are not adapted (technically or culturally).
This problem often arises in the housing sector. The management of these programmes is often seen as something akin to ‘relief’ (distributing tarpaulins and sheet metal) and then simply building houses, whereas its socio-cultural components (housing is a socio-economic construction rather than a simple house-building exercise) and political components (land management, management of services, particularly access to water and black water drainage; regional planning) are often underestimated. Humanitarian actors rarely have the urban planning skills required for this type of programme.
In these remote areas, often thousands of kilometres away, with complicated coastlines, the logistical constraints have been considerable. On the ground, it is essential that the parties involved are able to overcome these constraints, particularly during the initial emergency phase. This includes accessing information and putting in place the necessary logistics.
This is also where we find a collective reflection on the challenges of contextual knowledge, which led to the ACAPS and REACH initiatives. Tools such as Post Disaster Need Assessments (PDNA) are now being implemented on a fairly systematic basis after disasters by the World Bank, the European Union, the United Nations and, of course, the countries affected.
Lesson 3: Ensure solid coordination from the outset
The challenges of coordination between the players involved (given the amount of aid that has been mobilised) are necessarily significant. Coordination is both a time- and resource-intensive process, and a fundamental issue in avoiding duplication, pockets of unmet needs and inconsistent practices. The situation has been rather chaotic, despite the efforts of OCHA, UNDP and national institutions, which were initially largely excluded from the coordination process. In addition, competition between agencies had to be managed, particularly when it came to ‘targeting’ beneficiaries in order to gain access to funding.
This complicated situation, documented by the evaluations carried out during this period, together with those carried out for the Darfur crisis and the Pakistan earthquake, led to the launch of the United Nations humanitarian reform, which strengthened the role of the humanitarian coordinators responsible, together with OCHA, for setting up appeals for funds, drawing up 3W ‘who does what and where’ maps, centralising funding with the creation of the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) and establishing the cluster system. Considerable progress has been made over the years, and the major NGOs are now the driving force behind these good coordination practices.
The introduction of these new coordination mechanisms, known as ‘clusters’, as part of the United Nations humanitarian reform, has provided interesting opportunities for exchange and consultation. The difficulties lie more with the small NGOs and the uncoordinated aid sent by local authorities and certain bilateral systems.
On the French side, from the outset the DIPT/CPT proved its worth as a coordination mechanism for processing project proposals and allocating funds. A clearly defined interministerial role, a relatively efficient process for analysing project proposals, good support from the DGCID and good upstream communication with donors (DIPT/CPT, CRF, FDF) all contributed considerably to the coherence of the response. In France, the continuation of this dynamic, with the appointment of a national coordinator during the Haiti and Lebanon crises, or even a special envoy as in the case of Ukraine, is leading to greater collective coherence.
Lesson 4: Weak consideration of the ‘emergency development’ link
Evaluations frequently reveal a lack of reflection on the ‘crisis exit strategy’. This question often arises when the abundant emergency funding comes to an end, and the organisation has to decide whether to stay or go. Institutional difficulties (which mandate), and a lack of know-how and method, very often come to the fore. It is particularly at this stage that all the consequences of deficiencies in the analysis of local players and the weakness of partnership strategies with them reappear. The ex-post evaluation of disaster management and reconstruction activities shows that there is often a window of opportunity here for preparedness and prevention activities. What role will they play in the post-cyclone reconstruction phase in Mayotte?
Lesson 5: Prevention and preparedness are essential
A number of issues have arisen to ensure that the reconstruction process takes full account of all the problems, constraints and questions relating to risk management in South-East Asia, which is subject not only to earthquakes and tsunamis, but also to cyclones and droughts. The issue of exposure to risks has raised many complex questions about land ownership when it comes to producing prohibition decrees:
Integrated coastal zone management made significant progress when it was better analysed and understood how mangroves had a key impact on reducing the force of tsunami waves and, by extension, cyclone waves.
This dramatic event showed how poorly developed tsunami detection and warning systems were. Since then, UNESCO and its partners have set up a global tsunami warning system covering the Pacific, the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean, the Caribbean and the North-East Atlantic. This system incorporates rapid detection technologies, seismic and sea-level monitoring, and real-time data sharing to ensure that warnings reach coastal communities as quickly as possible.
The major event of the 2004 tsunami in South-East Asia was a powerful catalyst for a process of reflection on the risks, which by the end of January 2005 led the international community to propose a global strategy at a meeting in Hyogo, Japan. The Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) set out a number of commitments to reduce the loss of human life and the social, economic and environmental resources of communities and countries as a result of disasters. In 2015, a review of these efforts showed that the greatest progress had been made in making disaster risk reduction a national and local priority and in strengthening disaster preparedness at all levels (HFA Priorities for Action 1 and 5). A new meeting, once again in Japan (Sendai) and once again in an area affected by an earthquake and tsunami, has enabled efforts to continue. The Sendai agreement continues the efforts made, focusing on disaster risk prevention. At the same time, new ideas and tools have emerged, notably those relating to resilience, the challenges of taking account of climate change and the increasing risks of extreme climatic events.
Lesson 6: Distinct, even contradictory objectives need to be managed
It’s not always easy to reconcile “rapid response” and “quality”, “population satisfaction” and “local authority satisfaction”, especially in contexts where needs are great and the political situation quite sensitive. Transparency, awareness campaigns and outreach are essential. Humanitarian issues on the one hand, and political and security issues on the other, must be managed simultaneously, or even concurrently, but separately to avoid confusion.
During the Indian Ocean tsunami, the armed forces had a vital role to play, not least because, for the first time, the soldiers involved in supporting logistical activities were unarmed. The use of helicopters proved important in the early days, both for initial assessments of the situation and for delivering the most essential relief supplies.
The use of military boats to bring aid to remote areas has sometimes been very useful. With the large-scale deployment of military forces in many countries as part of the extreme emergency response (post-Tsunami, Pakistan and Haiti), the often raised issue of the risks of gender mixing between “humanitarians” and “military” was bound to come up again. Although the tension between actors on this issue is less pronounced in natural disaster situations than in armed conflicts, it nevertheless remains present, as the armed forces are obviously the arm of the “state humanitarian”. We need to put in place best practices and coordination mechanisms to clarify roles, mandates and responsibilities. Significant work has already been carried out, leading to the Oslo Guidelines on the use of military resources in disaster response, and the integration of this issue into military training manuals.
Lesson 7: The role of local players
Most of France’s major humanitarian agencies have shown themselves to be very weak in their ability to think and implement partnerships with local players and participatory processes with affected communities. Many excuses were put forward: no time, no local players, no trust, etc. A closer look at the reality shows that, in fact, this was largely a cultural bias on the part of humanitarians, reinforced by a lack of expertise in participatory methods. What’s more, the evaluation of numerous operations in natural disaster situations shows that local aid is often very important, structuring and promoting solidarity and distress management. When international players arrive and take over from these local players, particularly local NGOs, tensions can become serious, and the loss of energy and quality is accentuated. The loss of efficiency due to a lack of consideration for local players and their know-how is often considerable.
When it comes to natural disasters, the State is normally at the heart of the response. Unfortunately, the National Disaster Management Agencies and their decentralized branches have all too often been sidelined for good reasons (combating the political instrumentalization of aid) and not-so-good reasons (convenience, the quest for efficiency at all costs). Humanitarians have tended to bypass state and local government structures. This has led either to tensions between state structures and humanitarians, or to a lasting and damaging loss of legitimacy on the part of state bodies.
In fact, some of the feedback from the countries affected by the December 24 tsunami has demonstrated the importance of the spontaneous mutual aid that took place, thanks in particular to photo exchanges. Inland residents came to the aid of those affected by the tsunami. Neighbors and locals were the first to clear away the rubble, recover bodies and apply bandages, while the first supplies of rice and food came in carts and pick-ups from neighboring but unaffected villages, even before official or international aid arrived. In the Thai, Indian and Sri Lankan contexts, national NGOs played an important role, particularly in reaching areas that were difficult or inaccessible to foreigners (SEEDS for the Andaman and Nicobar Islands). In India, international NGOs could not work without national partners. In Banda Aceh and Nias, due to the area’s recent history of conflict, civil society structures were underdeveloped, but on the other hand, professional groups (fishermen’s associations, farmers’ groups) had a certain dynamism that was little used, with the exception of a few smaller, and therefore more agile, NGOs.
Since then, the debate on the localization of aid has gained real momentum, to the point of becoming one of the major topics of the Grand Bargain resulting from the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul in 2016. Things are moving in the right direction, but still too slowly, due to the reluctance of some donors and a certain conservatism on the part of some players.
The humanitarian aid sector has only recently begun to take account of the issue of mutual aid, or what are sometimes referred to as “zero-level responders”, who are often identified in evaluations but never highlighted. The Projet Entraide launched by Groupe URD should lead to important reflections on how best to work with these early players, who are still largely ignored and unsupported by formal aid mechanisms.
But local players are also regional players, who understood their importance in the December 26 2004 disaster, and who are still too often forgotten. It was at this point that the first steps towards regional coordination were taken, leading to the creation of the AHA Center (Asia Humanitarian Action Centre). The AHA Center is an intergovernmental organization established by the ten ASEAN member states to facilitate cooperation and coordination of disaster management among ASEAN member states.
Lesson 8: Humanitarian aid can have an impact on local politics and conflicts
The diversity of political contexts in the tsunami-affected region has highlighted just how sensitive the link is between aid (whether emergency or reconstruction) and the management of underlying local conflicts and tensions. While the tsunami diplomacy process proved successful in Indonesia, it may have been responsible for the deterioration of the conflict situation in Sri Lanka. In Banda Aceh, the tsunami triggered a ceasefire to allow aid to be delivered, and continued the process of resolving the civil war, which culminated in elections bringing a former rebel to power. In Sri Lanka, on the other hand, the tsunami heightened tensions between Tamils, Singhalese and Muslims, leading to massacres on the beaches where those displaced by the tsunami had settled.
The political complexity of these contexts has since led the Economic and Social Commission for Southeast Asia (ESCAP) to become involved in the risk sector and to develop a capacity for disaster intervention in highly political and conflict-ridden contexts. ESCAP was involved in negotiating the arrival of humanitarian aid in Myanmar after Hurricane Nargis.
CONCLUSION
The evaluations carried out show that not only NGOs, but also UN agencies and most donors have relatively weak institutional memories. Despite the institutionalization and professionalization of the sector, the time devoted to learning and efforts to build institutional memories remain weak. The result is all too often a replication of the same mistakes. It seems essential to ensure that the teams mobilized for emergency response, particularly those on the “front lines” but also those who come after, can take into account the experience developed elsewhere in this type of situation.
It is with this hope that this article has been written, at a time when we are celebrating the 20th anniversary of the South-East Asian Tsunami and Mayotte has just been ravaged by an extremely violent cyclone.
For more information, see Face aux dégâts considérables du climat, tirer les leçons du passé pour mieux affronter l’urgence à Mayotte – Groupe URD
[1] De Ville De Goyer, C., 2000, Stop propagating disaster myths, Lancet 356(9231), (9231), p.762-764,
De Ville De Goyer, C, 2004; Epidemics caused by dead bodies: a disaster myth that does not want to die; Rev. Pananm. Salut. Publica; 15(5); p.297-299
De Ville De Goyer C, Sarmiento J., Grunewald F, 2011; Health Response to the 2010 Haiti Earthquake: lessons to be learnt for the next massive sudden onset disaster, PAHO, Washington, 180 p.
François Grünewald
Agricultural Engineer INA-PG. He has been working for more than 35 years in the field of international solidarity after different positions at the UN, the ICRC and in NGOs. Since 1993, he has been involved with Groupe URD, a research, evaluation, methodological production and training institute specialising in crisis management, humanitarian action and reconstruction. He has conducted numerous research and evaluations on humanitarian and post-crisis programmes (Post Mitch, Tsunami zone, Somalia, Darfur, Central Africa, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Mali, Caucasus, Haiti, Syrian crisis, Nepal, Ebola, Yemen, etc.) for donors (European Commission, French, British and American governments, etc.), the ICRC, IFRC, the UN and NGOs. He leads work on disaster management and resilience as well as on population displacement. A former associate professor at the University of Paris XII, he teaches in various institutions in Europe, Canada and the United States. Author of numerous articles, he has edited several books, including « Entre Urgence et Développement », « Villes en Guerre et Guerre en Villes », « Bénéficiaires ou partenaires » published by Editions Karthala.
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