Wahlström on Coordinating during the Tsunami

Margareta Wahlström:  Well, it was a major challenge, in a way, to put some structure around that enormous outpouring in goodwill, and the enormous amount of resources.  So I don’t think that was where we were most successful.  But I do think that the constant dialogue that we entertained, talking with everyone, listening to them, trying to bring people together in a physical sense at the site of the disaster, making sure that they link up with the local government for example, which doesn’t happen always, and as soon as possible put some structure into the sense of what’s the priorities, extend the timeframe in which everyone was thinking. I think that was one of the major challenges, that is, for understandable reasons, everyone is very caught up with the immediate physical support to people, to bury dead people, to clean up the environment.  But already, 10 days into the emergency, you have to start thinking 6 months, 12 months, 2 years down the line.  And I remember one of the issues was that we got lots of resources now, but they have to be used over a longer period.  So that’s the kind of conversations we’re trying to moderate also between donors, and in particular, as you can imagine, a bit of tension occasionally between the national governments and these masses of people of goodwill.  Differences in attitudes, different sense in what’s the timeframe, and how quickly do you need to spend money, pressure from donors for immediate impacts. It was such an emotional period, and I particularly remember that many of the European donors who had their citizens killed were under huge public pressure to show immediate change of something, impact from their money.  So in a way, the good sense we have been building over years of what it takes in an emergency, the significance of the early and post-recovery, all of that for a short time is flying out of the windows, just under the pressure to perceive to do something.  And some governments were at great pains to retain that common sense attitude when they were speaking to their own public at home.  In all these early years we were trying to be the leverage point that tried to introduce the sense of ‘yes it’s large, but here are the elements.  It’s going to go on for a long time, don’t abandon this now after 6 months when the superficial things have been dealt with.’  We were also impressed with the fact, the situation in Indonesia, the generosity of the government to basically say you know, “We welcome help.”  They did a huge job with the help of the Indonesian military, civil society and the corporate sector.  They were clearly quite overwhelmed by the influx of people, as we were worldwide.  So I think, you know, the lesson learned from all this is that we don’t get to have a strong enough and commonly known professional framework for international cooperation and disaster relief operation.  One of the things that I hope to see in my own lifetime is that, particularly in highly disaster prone countries, we can do what we often commit to, to contribute to building their national capacity for disaster relief and the immediate neighboring countries.  And in that process let governments also develop a strong competence in how to interact in the international capacity.  Having their own sort of insight and knowledge about how to coordinate.  Knowing more precisely what you can expect, what resources can you draw down, who has got what?  These are important things for efficiency, particularly domestically, but of course it will make us all work together much more harmoniously internationally as well.  These are some of the things that I brought out in that situation.