In practice, dealing with disasters is somewhat messy. In the emergency response and early recovery stages (particularly for medium to fast onset disasters), the momentum for initiatives usually keeps up as there has been the obvious disaster; media attention; and (hopefully) sufficient financial resources. As time moves on however, there is the danger that momentum and interest begins to wane. It was interesting that following the 2004 Indonesian tsunami in Indonesia, the host government there had both a start date of April 2005 for their (government-run) recovery program, organised through what they called the BRR, and an end date four years later (ie May 2009) for the official closure of this. I think this particular approach works well.
Interestingly in Tonga, some of the coordination clusters I was involved in (in helping draw up terms of reference for), are currently meeting…this is encouraging, as these stakeholders are not only looking at emergency response/recovery initiatives, but increasingly at DRR ones as well. , ,
