Tsunami crisis - how can business contribute to the recovery?

One year on from the tsunami, and the need for business to contribute its skills and resources to aid long-term recovery has never been clearer.

This is the findings of a new report published by IBLF, entitled Best Intentions, Complex Realities, which argues that business sector skills are vital to get people back into permanent housing and to regenerate livelihoods. The huge response provoked by the tsunami was not matched by a capacity to deliver a long-term economic recovery in the region, the report finds.

The magnitude of the disaster, as well as the amount of media coverage and donor money raised in the weeks and months following the disaster were all unparalleled. Yet despite the money and the work by local communities, governments and aid agencies, the report says that 80% of the people displaced by the tsunami remain in temporary shelter and many remain unemployed.

And following a year in which both Hurricane Katrina and the South Asia earthquake also hit, there is increasing debate about how best international communities – and the business sector in particular – can react to disasters.

Slow transition to recovery

The Economist magazine observed that while the relief effort was extraordinarily successful in preventing outbreaks of disease, "the transition from emergency relief to reconstruction has gone less smoothly". The magazine noted examples such as aid agencies bombarding fishermen with offers of new boats, even though factories that produce ice to preserve the fish had not yet been rebuilt.

Other commentators have been more critical of the role played by NGOs. New Internationalist magazine, in an article entitled Tsunami Business, said that some of the big international NGOs entered communities for the first time and decided they knew more than the local organisations that had been based there for years.

The article also criticised the "unnecessary" spending in many regions, and the lack of transparency in where donors' money was actually going. IBLF's own report, Best Intentions, Complex Realities, says that high expectations about the quality and frequency of reporting has led to scepticism in the donor community.

Oxfam's Tsunami Accountability Report, however, provides a clear breakdown of where money has been spent to date - and shows that just 6% of donors' cash will be spent on administration costs and fundraising.

How business can make a difference

Best Intentions, Complex Realities explains how international businesses have, in tandem with local businesses, provided extensive support for local projects – such as Tata Group supporting seaweed farming in Tamil Nadu or clothing sub-contractor MAS Holdings initiating a housing project in Sri Lanka.

And in a separate report IBLF explores how companies can put programmes in place that allow them to use their employees' energy, expertise and resources in the wake of a disaster. The In Focus report, published by IBLF's employee engagement programmme ENGAGE, profiles the responses developed by companies such as Serco and Freshfields.

The In Focus report concludes that there is growing evidence that companies are learning from experience to create more effective responses to disasters around the world.