Reflections on one year of reconstruction in Aceh

Reflections on one year of reconstruction in Aceh

Andrew Steer, Jakarta

In the dreadful days between Christmas and New Year 2004, when
each day brought new horrors on the massive scale of the tragedy,
none of us realized how this would change our lives in the coming
year. I'm writing this on the flight from Jakarta to Banda Aceh
-- my seventeenth visit of the year since the tsunami.

The scale of the tragedy was unparalleled, of course, even for
those of us who had worked in other disaster reconstructions.
With 167,000 dead or missing along an 800 kilometer strip of
coastline that had been swept clean of buildings and all signs of
life, the task of rebuilding seemed, and was, overwhelming.

The response was also unprecedented. Never in history had so
many individuals, businesses and countries contributed so much in
response to a single event. It now appears that around US$9
billion in total will be available to rebuild Aceh and Nias, with
around one third from Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) and the
private sector, one third from international donors, and one
third from the government of Indonesia.

Never before has non-government actors played such a central
role in the long term reconstruction. Twelve months on there are
124 international NGOs and 430 local NGOs working alongside
dozens of donor and UN agencies engaged in the largest building
program in the world.

President Bill Clinton, the UN Special Envoy for the Tsunami,
and Paul Wolfowitz, President of the World Bank, have both noted
that the scale and spontaneity of the response to the tsunami
offers a test for us all. If funds are used efficiently to
quickly restore communities and livelihoods, then this type of
response could become a model for future disasters. But if
reconstruction is seen to be inefficient or delayed by
bureaucratic bottlenecks, cynicism will set in and it may be
decades before such generosity will be seen again.

So how goes the battle one year on? There's good news and bad
news.

A comparison with reconstruction following other recent
disasters shows Aceh doing better than average. But this is
largely because the average is so low. Reconstruction after
disasters is almost always much slower than expectations, mainly
because we fail to grasp how difficulties interact and multiply.
We tend to plan our programs as if land titles, ports, roads and
power supply still exist, and as if public officials suddenly
learn to cooperate in a manner never seen before.

Such over-optimism is true in advanced industrial countries
such as Japan (Kobe earthquake, 1995) and the United States
(Hurricane Ivan, 2004), just as it has been in recent years in
Turkey (1992 earthquake), Honduras (Hurricane Mitch, 1998), Iran
(Bam earthquake, 2003), and Venezuela (floods 1999).

Being above average gives no satisfaction knowing that 60,000
people are still living in tents a year after the disaster. Such
an outcome is surely a statement of failure. Importantly,
however, this failure is not due to a slow program of permanent
housing construction: The initial plan of 30,000 in the first
year is close to being achieved. It is rather due to an error in
judgment regarding temporary housing. Nobody wanted to divert
resources away from the job of permanent housing, so almost no
agencies invested in temporary housing that would last for the
two years until the permanent housing was ready. Perhaps the
silver lining to this mistake is that permanent housing is now
likely to be completed earlier than planned. With 5000 houses per
month now being started, it is realistically hoped that everybody
will be in permanent homes by mid-2007.

The government made two decisions early on which slowed down
the start-up of visible reconstruction, but which we believe will
have a high pay-off in quality and even speed as we enter 2006.

The first was to reject a top-down Jakarta-led reconstruction
strategy in favor of one led firmly by the affected communities
themselves. It would have been quicker to hire a dozen large
construction companies and send in the cement.

But consultation with Acehnese citizens reminded the planners
that rebuilding communities is as important as rebuilding houses
and that allowing them to take the lead will help healing and
recovery. In several thousand villages in Aceh and Nias
communities have been helped to map their own land, choose their
house designs, and in many instances to build their own homes.
More than 35,000 facilitators are helping this happen.

The second decision was to establish a new government Agency,
the Badan Rekonstruksi dan Rehabilitasi (BRR), charged with
leading the entire effort. Staring an agency from scratch is not
cheap, easy or quick, and it was after mid-year before the agency
was capable of adding real value. This was one reason why there
was a sharp dip in activity in the April-September period as the
relief teams left well before the construction teams arrived. Now
the benefits of this decision are outweighing the costs, as we
are seeing coherence and drive to the program that would have
been unlikely had existing government departments been left to do
the job on their own.

A year on, what have we learned?

Bureaucracy: Doing things at normal speed would leave people
in tents for years. Strong measures may be needed to cut through
red tape.

Coordination and Partnership: Holding meetings to share
information is not enough. There must be disciplined coordination
and joint decision-making. There are some important experiments
in this regard. The Multi-Donor Fund, which I have the privilege
to co-chair (together with Pak Kuntoro and the European
Commission Ambassador) is a $540 million fund that pools
resources of fifteen donors who are more concerned about setting
the job done than in who gets the credit for it.

Passion: Reconstruction in a devastated environment is for the
strong-hearted. It is messy, frustrating and extremely difficult.
Visit the Multi-donor office in Banda Aceh (or the BRR Office or
NGO offices) at 10 pm on any evening, and you will be inspired.
Never in my career have I seen greater commitment to get the job
done, month after month.

Resilience: We are mere guests in Aceh. The main players are
those whose home it is. We have staff members who lost spouses,
children, and homes, yet insisted in getting back to work
immediately. Of the 500,000 who were displaced in Aceh, 320,000
of them no longer count themselves as displaced. They received
help to be sure, but it was with their own initiative that they
have picked up their lives.

The Year Ahead

About $1 billion was spent on relief in the first half of
2005, and nearly $1 billion on reconstruction in the second half.
The real work of reconstruction -- perhaps $2-3 billion worth --
will take place in 2006, and an equivalent amount in 2007. Its
thus much too early to tell whether the recovery will be rated a
success or a failure. If we apply the lessons of the past year,
and redouble our efforts, Aceh's reconstruction could introduce a
new better way of doing business in such recoveries. The second
anniversary will be the one that counts.

The writer is The World Bank Country Director for Indonesia.