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Helping Haiti recover before interest wanes
By Jeffrey D. Sachs |
February 8, 2010, Monday
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THE horrors of Haiti's earthquake continue to unfold. More than one million people are exposed to hunger and disease and, with the rain and hurricane seasons approaching, are vulnerable to further hazards.
The world's emergency-response systems - especially for impoverished countries in zones that are vulnerable to earthquakes, volcanoes, droughts, hurricanes, and floods - need upgrading.
After just a month or so, the emergency phase will give way to a decades-long struggle for recovery and long-term development.
Haiti must avoid a prolonged period of tent cities in which people are mere refugees. But where should displaced people - numbering hundreds of thousands, and perhaps more than a million - live?
The economy will have a simple structure in the coming years, with most economic activities focused in five sectors: smallholder, or peasant, agriculture; reconstruction; port services and light manufacturing; local small-scale trade; and public services, including health care and education. The key challenge is to support these five sectors in order to combine short-term relief with long-term reconstruction and development.
Agriculture
First, special efforts should be made to boost peasant agriculture and rural communities. This will enable hundreds of thousands of displaced people to return to their village communities and live from farming.
Reconstruction - of roads, buildings, and water and sanitation systems - will employ tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of Haitian construction workers, and boost the regeneration of towns. The World Food Program can help peasant farmers to produce more food in the countryside and then purchase the food to use in food-for-work programs oriented to construction projects.
Haiti's infrastructure was meager before the earthquake (hence the shocking mortality rate), and most of that is now rubble. Large-scale capital investment will also be needed to re-equip the ports and to re-establish a power grid.
Recovery will also require re-establishing at least a small-scale manufacturing sector.
Haiti, like its next-door neighbor, the Dominican Republic, once created jobs in port facilities, including production of clothing, baseballs, and other light-manufacturing items.
Those jobs disappeared in the 1990s, when the US imposed a trade embargo on Haiti.
Other countries have risen from the rubble of natural disaster and war, and Haiti can do the same over the next five to ten years.
For the next decade, however, and especially for the next five years, there will be no escape from the need to rely on international financing, and mainly grant assistance, to finance the rebuilding effort. The world has spent heavily in Haiti before, but very ineffectively. This time, it must be done right.
Coordination
The second key to successful reconstruction is to harmonize the international response. There are probably 40 or more official organizations from abroad, if not more, already engaged in the recovery effort. There should be a highly professional executive team coordinating the international support efforts.
I have watched the problems of international cooperation for a quarter-century. Each agency has its role, but they also tend to squabble over turf rather than cooperate. International financial promises are made for headlines and photo opportunities, but end up undelivered. We therefore need money in the bank, and clear leadership.
My nominee to guide the process is the Inter-American Development Bank.
The IDB's deep, long-term commitments in Haiti and professional expertise in agriculture, health, education, and infrastructure qualify it to coordinate the multitude of agencies that will be involved.
(The author is professor of economics and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2009. www.project-syndicate.org.)
The world's emergency-response systems - especially for impoverished countries in zones that are vulnerable to earthquakes, volcanoes, droughts, hurricanes, and floods - need upgrading.
After just a month or so, the emergency phase will give way to a decades-long struggle for recovery and long-term development.
Haiti must avoid a prolonged period of tent cities in which people are mere refugees. But where should displaced people - numbering hundreds of thousands, and perhaps more than a million - live?
The economy will have a simple structure in the coming years, with most economic activities focused in five sectors: smallholder, or peasant, agriculture; reconstruction; port services and light manufacturing; local small-scale trade; and public services, including health care and education. The key challenge is to support these five sectors in order to combine short-term relief with long-term reconstruction and development.
Agriculture
First, special efforts should be made to boost peasant agriculture and rural communities. This will enable hundreds of thousands of displaced people to return to their village communities and live from farming.
Reconstruction - of roads, buildings, and water and sanitation systems - will employ tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of Haitian construction workers, and boost the regeneration of towns. The World Food Program can help peasant farmers to produce more food in the countryside and then purchase the food to use in food-for-work programs oriented to construction projects.
Haiti's infrastructure was meager before the earthquake (hence the shocking mortality rate), and most of that is now rubble. Large-scale capital investment will also be needed to re-equip the ports and to re-establish a power grid.
Recovery will also require re-establishing at least a small-scale manufacturing sector.
Haiti, like its next-door neighbor, the Dominican Republic, once created jobs in port facilities, including production of clothing, baseballs, and other light-manufacturing items.
Those jobs disappeared in the 1990s, when the US imposed a trade embargo on Haiti.
Other countries have risen from the rubble of natural disaster and war, and Haiti can do the same over the next five to ten years.
For the next decade, however, and especially for the next five years, there will be no escape from the need to rely on international financing, and mainly grant assistance, to finance the rebuilding effort. The world has spent heavily in Haiti before, but very ineffectively. This time, it must be done right.
Coordination
The second key to successful reconstruction is to harmonize the international response. There are probably 40 or more official organizations from abroad, if not more, already engaged in the recovery effort. There should be a highly professional executive team coordinating the international support efforts.
I have watched the problems of international cooperation for a quarter-century. Each agency has its role, but they also tend to squabble over turf rather than cooperate. International financial promises are made for headlines and photo opportunities, but end up undelivered. We therefore need money in the bank, and clear leadership.
My nominee to guide the process is the Inter-American Development Bank.
The IDB's deep, long-term commitments in Haiti and professional expertise in agriculture, health, education, and infrastructure qualify it to coordinate the multitude of agencies that will be involved.
(The author is professor of economics and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2009. www.project-syndicate.org.)
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