Asia 21 Alumni Series: What keeps me up at night five years after Typhoon Yolanda?
by Lesley Cordero, Asia 21 Young Leader, Class of 2012
On November 8, 2013, Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) ravaged the Philippines killing more than 6,300 people and leaving 1,472,251 affected families, damaging 1,085,446 houses, and total economic losses worth Php 571 billion. Dubbed as the strongest typhoon to ever make landfall, typhoon Yolanda’s 380 km/hr. wind gustiness struck more than 171 cities and municipalities in 44 provinces across the 9 regions of the country.[1]
Five years after Typhoon Yolanda, what keeps me up at night are not the criticisms of how slow the reconstruction was nor how messed up the emergency response coordination was but the nagging question of “what could I have done better, if I had a do-over?” Let me share some reflections and lessons learned from the experience.
Massive corruption or the lack of an effective post-disaster communications strategy?
Five years after Yolanda, people are still asking where is the money? Where did all the foreign donations go? In the minds of many, they believe that government officials pocketed the millions of aid and donations for the Yolanda victims. But what is perceived as massive corruption in the Typhoon Yolanda Rehabilitation and Recovery efforts of the government is to a large extent a lack of an effective post-disaster communications strategy in the aftermath of Typhoon Yolanda.
If I were to enumerate and rank the mistakes that we have made during Yolanda, perhaps my number one – is the failure to regularly communicate to the public, local governments, and media and communicate well. Right after Yolanda hit, most of the agencies and officials were too busy doing relief operations, undertaking post-disaster needs assessment, gathering data and putting together the recovery and rehabilitation plan.
Managing Expectations and Communicating
No one focused on regularly updating the LGU officials and the affected communities on what was happening on the ground, what government was doing, and explaining the recovery issues and challenges. It did not matter that the government delivered the Comprehensive Rehabilitation and Recovery Plan with 18,486 programs, projects and activities in 6 months and got the Php 167.86 billion budget approved in 2 months. It did not make a difference that there were a lot of projects and activities implemented by various agencies with private sector, CSOs, and development partners after Yolanda. The government did not do a job in sharing relevant information to the affected communities, the public, and the media immediately.
We failed to provide timely updates of the projects done, the timeline of implementation, and future programs to be delivered for every province, city or municipality. The agency officials ended up being blamed for the delays and getting defensive, scrambling for answers on delays in relief distribution, implementation of livelihood and housing projects, and other recovery issues. Managing expectations in post-disaster recovery and rehabilitation meant staying ahead of the issues and communicating the solutions, speedy implementation of basic services (quick wins), and getting the affected communities to implement the programs and have a big stake in the overall recovery efforts of government.
Transparency and Accountability --- Where did the money go?
For transparency and accountability, the Foreign Aid Transparency Hub (FaiTH) was established by the Philippine government. It was a platform that captured the donations pledged and committed by the different countries and donors during the emergency and humanitarian phase. So where is the money?
In 2014, FaiTH tracked a total of Php 73.3 billion being pledged by various countries and donors. But what was actually committed was only around Php 17.2 billion and what the government received was only around Php 2.5 billion in cash and non-cash donations that went to the DSWD, NDRRMC and Commission on Filipino Overseas. Where did the Php 14.8 billion go? We failed again to explain to the public that the Php 14.8 billion that the donor countries committed for the Yolanda relief went to the different NGOs, multilateral agencies, UN agencies, and international organizations chosen by the donor countries to implement the projects.
For the rehabilitation and recovery phase, the Office of the Presidential Assistant for Rehabilitation and Recovery (OPARR) reported that a total of Php 126.18 billion in loans were offered by the development partners and Php 13.38 billion in grants were provided[2]. For the private sector contribution, a total of Php 26.2 billion were pledged and a total of Php 12.98 billion worth of projects were validated and completed for livelihood, housing, social services and infrastructure. While the grants supported the rehabilitation and recovery efforts at the national and local levels, government was remiss in emphasizing that almost 90% of the rehabilitation and recovery pledges by partners were in the form of loan offers.
The demand for transparency and accountability for disaster aid goes both ways. Donor countries and development partners should also be held to the same standards of reporting as governments. After Yolanda, the donors and partners were encouraged to report or declare (in news releases) the disaster aid/assistance they are committing (actual amount of the donation) instead of what they intend to pledge/promise. This helped government manage the expectations of the public in terms of the actual resources available for post-disaster rehabilitation and recovery.
Learning from the Typhoon Yolanda experience
Typhoon Yolanda highlighted a lot of challenges in our country’s disaster risk reduction and management structure and program. It emphasized the things that government must do: (i) the need to institutionalize coordination mechanisms among government agencies and stakeholders in the course of the rehabilitation and recovery phase; (ii) the need to establish sound rehabilitation and recovery policies, effective implementation arrangements, and pre-disaster baseline data; (iii) develop a standard disaster rehabilitation and recovery guide for national and local government and other stakeholders; (iv) promote transparency and accountability by developing interoperable monitoring systems; and (v) identify available financing/resources, develop guidelines on access to and use of funds, and emergency procurement procedures.
With the recent typhoons, earthquakes and the Marawi post-conflict recovery and reconstruction, one can see some notable improvements in the overall disaster risk management program of the country after Typhoon Yolanda. The DOST-PAGASA is doing a better job in forecasting the paths and landfalls of typhoons and communicating the warnings to the affected LGUs and public. The overall preparedness for typhoons has improved with pre-disaster risk analysis done by the NDRRMC and affected LGUs. The disaster response has also improved with national and local government investing more in equipment and capacity building for first responders. And the Department of Finance has developed and implemented a Disaster Risk Finance and Insurance strategy that would provide innovative disaster finance instruments and risk transfer mechanisms at the national, local, and individual levels.
If I had a do-over, I would…
After every major disaster, the challenges of disaster response, coordination, recovery planning, financing, implementation, and reconstruction are always the same. Perhaps, the proposed Department of Disaster Resilience would be able to address some of these challenges.
But if I had a do-over, I would ask my boss to assign me to the communications team to help develop the Yolanda recovery communications strategy. I would volunteer to provide regular briefings and updates and answer questions and issues of the public, LGUs, affected communities, and other stakeholders, throughout the recovery phase. I think if I had done this five years ago and done it well, then maybe, I would not be hearing the question of “where did all the money for the Yolanda victims go,” as much as I am hearing it today.
Establishing an effective post-disaster recovery communications strategy is already winning half the battle of public perception. The success of the government’s post-disaster rehabilitation and recovery efforts is often defined by how powerful the key messages have articulated that: after a disaster, (i) the government is in control, (ii) the emergency response is fast; and (iii) rehabilitation and recovery is moving according to the timeline.
The other half of the battle for a successful Post-Disaster Recovery program is hinged on: (i) the leadership and mandate of the agency/person appointed to manage the rehabilitation and recovery efforts; (ii) how well he or she would be able to coordinate with all the national and local government agencies and relevant stakeholders; (iii) how well he/she could navigate the politics, bureaucracy, and existing policies and procedures; (iv) how good he/she could leverage resources and find available financing; and (v) use simple implementation modalities that would the LGUs and communities to participate in the implementation of recovery projects. But all these things would depend on the whole government, a few agencies and a team of officials and staff designated to lead the rehabilitation and recovery efforts. This would be beyond the control of one person.