BUILDING CONFIDENCE IN MANAGING DISASTER
Lessons from The Post Disaster Reconstruction of Aceh and Nias
Keynote speech at the ASEAN Regional Forum’s
Eight Intersessional Meeting on Disaster Relief
Banda Aceh, Indonesia, 5-6 December 2008
Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, Director
Agency for the Rehabilitation and Reconstruction of Aceh and Nias
Your Excellency Deputy Foreign Minister of the Republic of Indonesia, Your Excellency Governor of Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam, Excellencies, Honorable Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen.
Firstly, thank you for giving me the opportunity to address this important meeting and share with you the progress and the lessons we have learned together from our joint undertaking of managing the Reconstruction and Rehabilitation of the land and people of Aceh and Nias post the devastating earthquake and tsunami almost four years ago.
My speech today would not be the same had several critical factors did not happen the way it was. The virtuous convergence of the powerful impact of the media, the decision of the government of Indonesia to open up what was before an off limit region for foreigners, the swift reaction of seasoned humanitarian organization, the surge of symphaty from the governments and people in all corners of the world were some of the factors which define what and where we are today. But many of those factors would have just ended as a collection of unfulfilled and frustrating wishes had a fate defining event did not happen : The ASEAN Summit for Tsunami, which was held on the 6th of January 2005, barely 10 days after the tragic event. For that, we, the people of Aceh and Nias, and all the parties who are involved in the recovery: implementor, coordinators and even donors should be forever grateful, as the foresight and quick reaction of the leaders of ASEAN and the world have provided us with the confidence and resolve that what was then to be done is indeed the wish of all.
Let me get some basic information quickly out of the way first, those being a report of what has been achieved so far, before going into some lessons which we have learned and maybe useful for addressing other disasters which may come our way. First, on the immediate relief stage. Beside being an off limit territory due to an extended conflict, Aceh was also a very poor region. Education, economic development, health services and general public service was way below what was experienced by most other regions in Indonesia. Partly as a consequence of the conflict, but also because of things which triggered the conflict in the first place. In a bigger scale, Indonesia was under a military embargo, such that the military logistical capacity was very limited. Add to that the fact that the country, and the surrounding region for that matter, has not seen a disaster of this proportion for a long time. In short, our preparedness to deal with this scale of disaster was no reason to be proud about. Then the giant earthquake hit and the black wave stroke. More than 200,000 people died or missing, 500,000 people displaced and the face of the coastline, 800 km long, was turned to either barren saline field or a giant messy pile of undescripable debris. No way that a single country, what more a province which apparatus was equally destroyed, can cope with it. Only a united world can, and yes we all did. And the largest non-war military operation happened within days, involving 34 countries, 78 helicopters, 14 battleships, 2 aircraft carriers, 31 aircrafts, among others. And this is matched by an equally strong civilian force bringing heavy equipments and other capacities as well. All in all the relief force totalled more than 50,000 people, coordinated by BAKORNAS. The result, no follow on casualties nor outbreak of diseases experienced. And, equally significantly, the rule of engagement in addressing the next stage of recovery was established: The international community provide the needed help, and the host country lived up to the expectation of providing the coordination and the necessary facilitation.
A damage and loss assessment was immediately undertaken, and the result was staggering. 120,000 houses need to be rebuild, 3000 km road reconstructed, 80,000 hectares of agri and aquaculture field need to be restored, 120 health centers, 2000 school buildings and 2,500 teachers need to be replaced. The resulting blueprint identified some 220 key performance indicators for the program, captured in the need for some 7.2 billion USD funding scale, for which the Government only have 2.1 billion to dedicate. Again, the world responded by pledging 5 billion USD for Aceh and Nias out of the 6.2 billion for all tsunami affected countries.
Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am happy to report, that out of those 220 KPIs together we have been able to achieve some 96% completion. And out of the 5 billion pledged, today we have recorded 93% conversion into projects, thus commitments. A number the world have never seen before. Thank you to the world.
Now, let me turn to what lessons have we learned. We all realized that learning is not the claim of any single organization. Everybody learned, in large or small amount. That’s why all the stakeholders in the reconstruction process is currently embarking on a process to collect and discuss lessons learned by each, and we hope to eventually be able to produce and present a collective Lessons Learned piece for the world to use in the future. While this collaborative process is on going, these are some which I can share for now. Let me frame it along the principles laid down in the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, which was endorsed by more than 100 countries on March 2, 2005:
1. The Principle of Ownership
We realize that while two third of the funds and effort came as assistance from the international community in the final analisis the responsibility for the recovery lies on the shoulder of the Government. It is therefore imperative that the Government takes whatever action to ensure that the Ownership of the overall program, therefore its success or failure, is a responsibility for which the Government must answer to the people. To ensure that this is the case, the following was done:
a. The creation of a special agency, BRR, with a mandate which is both focused on the task at hand and significantly multisectoral, strengthen it with both the necessary regulation, structure and capacity to address the issues in a professional and accountable way, and give it the flexibility to apply the appropriate approach to deal with operational situation.
b. To equip that agency with a masterplan, while allowing the agency to continuously sharpen it with the reality in the field. To ensure its coherence with the overall national strategy a regular update with the President is done.
c. In turn, the agency – BRR, reached out to the affected communities and ensure allignment of the program and the community’s preferences
By doing so, the Government has conveyed a clear position that it has the full intend,
and capacity to lead the program through a wide enough corridor for other sourced
capabilities to perform. This has proven to be effective in creating the necessary
confidence of the contributing parties to provide the needed assistance while
honoring the responsibility of the Government to its people.
Challenges to implement this in practice abound, both from internal and external side
of the Government, but we can say that in the overall it has been proven effective as
the achievement so far shown.
2. The Principle of Allignment.
a. To allign myriads of programs, multisectoral and implemented by multiple sourced capabilities, a clear rule of engagement is critical. We have developed an approach and a methodology to allow this to happen.
b. This approach, centered in the registration and joint approval of projects through the Project Concept Notes Approval Workshops and technology enabled continuous status updating, as well as the effective coordination through the Multi Donor Fund mechanism, has immensely helped in planning and monitoring program allignments
c. In the field, allignment is ensured at the lowest level, the district and sub district level coordination of sectoral working groups were practiced. This, combined with the establishment and operation of Joint Secretariates with gradually recovering local government mechanism works at the action level.
Allignment is a multidimensional challenge. We must allign vertically to ensure
program coherence, horizontally accross sectors as in most cases the baseline has
been wiped out by the disaster, accross implementors to avoid overlap and
making sure that gaps are filled, and to maintain a progressive balance of output
quality and capacity development of the local economy.
To give you a sense of the size of the challenge, consider the need to allign
12,000 simultaneous projects along the area defined by 800 km coastline,
implemented by up to 600 agencies.
Yes, we can share a lot of lessons, both the good, the bad and the ugly. The fact
that our Recovery Aceh Nias Data Base, the engine behind the Project Concept
Notes practiced approach, and the GIS and Asset Management System received
multiple International Awards for effectiveness testifies that it is working.
3. The principle of Harmonization
a. We have the NGOs Catholic Relief Services working side by side with Islamic Relief, Samaritan Purse, Moslem Aid, 28 Red Cross Red Crescent organizations, Oxfam, World Vision, Buddha Tzuchi, China Charity, Saudi Charity and many many more. We thank them all, not only for their contribution but also their willingness to harmonize their activities with each other. Some begin from being very advanced on the experienced in doing what they do, some are recently venturing into a new field driven by humanitarian reasons. Harmonizing well tested practice with fresh enthusiasm needs effort and patience, and they all did it.
b. From the government side, the duty is to facilitate such that harmonization happens. When there are potential friction, we are there to provide unbiased judgment. Judgement based on allignment, good intention and familiarity with local wisdoms. We also facilitate, through our Integrated Service for Visa, Custom, Immigration and Security, for the partners to have more time for work and harmonization rather to spend time for those administrative necessities. The urgency of the program demands it to be so.
c. At a higher level we conduct annual Coordination Forums for Aceh and Nias (Recovery). A high level event where all partners get together and discuss and update each other on progress and challenges, and find solution to barriers. We have done three of such events and now busy preparing for the fourth and last, to be conducted in February 13 and 14 of 2009. This time is for acknowledging everybody’s achievement and consolidating our lessons learned.
4. The Principle of Managing For Results
a. The masterplan’s KPIs guide us all to result. And the award winning system of asset management, where we track every single assets build in a GPS enabled map, thus giving them the exact coordinate beside information on who build it, at what cost and who the beneficiaries are is an effective tool to ensure that what was promised was actually done.
b. More difficult to track is the result in the soft areas, such as capacity development programs and social assistance, as well as livelihood initiatives where result is more directly outcome measured than output. These have its KPIs too, and it was equally tracked. But the facts remains, while we are able to ensure that it happens, whether it really works need more time to certify.
c. Results, when it is already achieved, needs to be protected. From lack of use, from decay and deteroriation due to lack of maintenance, and from destruction by future disasters. During the tsunami, 2,500 teachers died. To redevelop the teaching capacity we will need a long time, although now we have been able to train some 37,000 teachers to supplement what was left. How can we prevent such waste? The answer is better disaster preparedness through the reduction of disater risks. The new Law on Disaster Management (Law # 24 of 2007) and its implementing regulations defined what needs to be done. Full implementation of it will ensure that results achieved will be less lost have a disaster hits. The Tsunami Disaster Research Management Center (TDRMC) established during the reconstruction phase will be a useful capability center to help prevent future damage.
d. All in all, we can say that the reconstruction was done in an effective and efficient way, considering the difficulties encountered in the implementation of it – the spread, the weak local economic development capacity of the market, the complexity of multisectoral challenge.
We are now preparing our final report, and together with the CFAN initiative it
will report, as part of our accountability deed to the people – both the deserving
victims of the disaster and the contributing public, the result of the mandate they
give us to help the people recover from the impact of the disaster.
5. The Principle of Mutual Accountability
a. Straight accountability measures were done with quite a heavy dose. BRR established its internal Anti Corruption Unit – a first for a government agency. Every single employee, implementing partners, contractors signed a pact of integrity. And every one are encouraged to blow whistle when they see something amiss. We also work closely with the Corruption Erradication Committe (KPK) and invite the committee to open its office in Banda Aceh.