That Hungry Cause for Emergency Preparedness Aid

Earthquake in Chile! Tsunami in Hawaii! Hunger in Niger! War all over the place! It's raining beavers and walruses! Egad!

Humans have a habit of waiting until crisis strikes before rallying to help. As has become the mantra of many of us who deal with global emergencies regularly, we cannot afford to wait until after a crisis to respond. Here's a quick look at the tradeoffs.

Prioritizing Political Development and Quick Relief (Status Quo)

Those who champion the status quo tend to claim that it is impossible to replace every house across the developing world with one that is earthquake resistant, that we should not run around getting paranoid about tsunamis we have little control over, or that if beavers fall from the sky it's every man for himself.

Policy-makers and voters prioritize the current crises, ongoing wars, and the approach of one crisis at a time. Costs are huge on response and predictably low on development.

Mainstreaming Emergency Preparedness As Top Priority in All Sectors (Goal)

But here's the other side of the debate. Many crisis responders agree that it's impossible for every country to suddenly have an emergency structure in place, but argue that many steps can be accomplished now which would cost (in the long run) far less than emergency response. In fact, many teams in the U.S. government are already in support of making emergency preparedness the top priority, but funding has tended to go into early-warning systems, not fulfilling the great need for follow-through development, preparedness systems on the ground, and peacebuilding.

For example, if Haiti's government had required a more strict building code - with international support - maybe, despite rising housing costs and many violations and exceptions, there would at least have been a handful of additional buildings that may have survived this past earthquake. The primary reasons prevention approaches get crossed off donor, voter, and policymaker agendas are three:

First, prevention success is hard to measure. If one can measure a decrease in the numbers of kids dying from hunger-related disease in Niger, than one can prove to donors that the intervention was worth it. But what if there was no hunger emergency in the first place, because it was prevented? Then funding would drop away, thus potentially failing the follow through of the successful intervention and so on.

To overcome this, donors need to focus on other kinds of indicators. Rather than death and morbidity (the outcome of a crisis) they can focus on sudden food production decline or hospital check-ins (leading indicators).

The second reason many fail to prioritize preparedness measures is because they see it as a sector in itself, a department, or something that is "extra" or an "add-on." But what if emergency preparedness was, like your mother and scout troop leader always told you, rule number one, the "Section I" on every proposal, every grant, every order form, every report, mainstreamed across all sectors? For example, isn't "trade" or "transportation" as critical in emergency preparedness as is "defense," "food," and "water?"

Third, and this is the mother of all reasons people fail to prioritize preparedness, the big one, the eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani of all: the supernatural. Whether one believes in the great big everything or not, one cannot deny that more lives could have been saved in Haiti, Chile, Hawaii, and elsewhere if there were better building codes, structural retro-fitting, and emergency logistical equipment in place. If the argument is made that it was part of God's (or Frank's) plan, than that would negate the faith argument that we have free will, wouldn't it?

If we are judged by our actions, then we cannot simultaneously claim not to have responsibility for some events and not other events. For centuries, we have looked at the huge, terrifying risks we take in life and hoped and believed that somewhere, someone or something would sweep down and save us once the going got too tough. Even if this were true, would that mean we shouldn't keep a first aid kit in the house, that we shouldn't wear seatbelts, or that we shouldn't put emergency preparedness as the top global donor priority?

Photo credit: PhillipC (Simple technology saves bridge from New Zealand earthquake)