Learning Lessons from Disaster Recovery

Update

ProVention and ALNAP released a paper on lessons learned from slow-onset disasters looking in particular at drought and food and livelihoods insecurity in July 2007, another paper on lessons learned from flood disasters in January 2008, and the most recent paper looks at earthquake relief and rehabilitation.

ProVention also supported a series of lessons learned published by the International Federation of Red Cross & Red Crescent Societies in 2007, which look back at relocation and construction programmes in Honduras and Nicaragua following hurricane Mitch (1998) and in the Maldives and Sri Lanka following the 2004 tsunami.

Description

Although there has been widespread belief within the development community that well targeted recovery programmes may be one of the most effective means of reducing poverty, in the past there has been little attention to system-wide analyses of the recovery process. The result has been that lessons have not always been learned from disaster to disaster, even within the same country, leading to repetition of mistakes where they could have been avoided.

Under the leadership of the World Bank Disaster Management Facility, this initiative undertook a five-country review of recovery after major natural disasters (Bangladesh, Honduras, India, Mozambique, Turkey), carried out for the ProVention Consortium between May 2002 and June 2003. The intent was to look in a systematic manner at the interventions by government, donors, and NGOs in these recovery efforts, giving focused attention to the scale of the interventions, their longer-term impact on development, and who ultimately benefited. The objectives of the review were to:

  • Analyse in comparative perspective the strengths and weaknesses of recovery assistance from governments, donors and civil society;
  • Examine recovery policies, systems, resources and impact;
  • Assess whether recovery interventions were pro-poor, participatory, and supported poor people's livelihoods and gender equality;
  • Develop recommendations for future recovery programmes.

The case studies also examine how these lessons can be replicated as well as how common constraints to good practice can be overcome, focusing on four main areas: policies for disaster recovery/management, systems for disaster recovery, resources for recovery, and impacts of recovery efforts.

Seeking to make these lessons more readily available during critical relief and early recovery activities, ProVention has established a collaboration with the Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in Humanitarian Action (ALNAP) to draw together past lessons as a guide for ongoing response planning and extend analysis of risk reduction in broader recovery evaluations.

In 2007, ProVention also supported a series of lessons learned published by the International Federation of Red Cross & Red Crescent Societies, which look back at relocation and construction programmes in Honduras and Nicaragua following hurricane Mitch (1998) and in the Maldives and Sri Lanka following the 2004 tsunami.

Outputs & events

Recovery studies from past disaster responses

In 2004-2005, the World Bank published three case studies from the 'Learning Lessons from Disaster Recovery' study originally started in 2002. These case studies identify lessons learned from the following disasters:

  • Recovery study: Bangladesh - floods 1998
  • Recovery study: Honduras - Hurricane Mitch 1998
  • India - Gujarat earthquake 2001 (unpublished working paper)
  • Recovery study: Mozambique - floods 2000 and 2001
  • Turkey - earthquakes of 1999 (unpublished working paper)

Lessons from evaluations of relief and recovery responses

ProVention has collaborated with the Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in Humanitarian Action (ALNAP) to draw together past lessons as a guide for ongoing response planning and extend analysis of risk reduction in broader recovery evaluations. This has resulted in a series of joint ProVention-ALNAP papers highlighting learning from previous relief and recovery operations in response to:

IFRC recovery studies:

Next Steps

Key areas of interest for further studies include the development of a lessons learned paper on the impact of recovery on strengthening livelihoods and reducing vulnerability, the use of microinsurance for providing risk transfer mechanisms particularly to the poor, cost-benefit analyses of the net benefits and effectiveness of risk reduction measures, and the social and political contexts and policy environments that enable (or hinder) the implementation of effective risk reduction measures.