chapter 4 - DRK

Strictly under embargo until Wednesday 22 September at 00:01 GMT (02:01 Geneva time)Box 1.2 Can Haiti build back better?All eyes are on Haiti to see if some good cancome of the tragedy which overtook the countryon 12 January 2010 when its capital, Portau-Prince,was shaken to its foundations by anearthquake that killed 230,000 people and leftsome 1.5 million people homeless, accordingto Haitian government figures. Can the impoverishednation ‘build back better’ in the years tocome? Can it, in collaboration with the internationalhumanitarian community, restore not justits physical infrastructure but also rejuvenate itsurban governance and risk reduction capability?In a country that has a slum prevalencerate of 70 per cent, there had been previousattempts to coordinate urban planning projectsbetween the Haitian government and internationalaid agencies. But these efforts failed.According to the 2009 UN-Habitat reportStrategic Citywide Spatial Planning, “Lack ofcoordination between the implementing agencieshas been one major reason, but the lack ofpublic participation, weak accountability andtransparency, low staff capacity and the centralizedsystem have contributed to the inertia.”That inertia hopefully evaporated with the12 January cataclysm. The long-term questionnow is how the government and its internationalpartners can implement a post-quake plan comprehensiveenough to cover the needs of not justthe affected population but the entire nation inthe years to come. While short-term relief goalswere met – including the provision of temporaryshelter materials and food – the long-term shelterneeds are complicated by unresolved issuesconcerning land ownership, urban density anddebris clearance to allow families to return tothe sites of their original homes.Designed to hold 250,000 people, Portau-Princegrew to become one of the mostdensely populated cities in Latin America. Its2 million people consumed nearly all of Haiti’sresources. A mass influx to the capital beganin the early 1980s following the swine flu alertworldwide and the subsequent slaughter ofmore than 2,000 native ‘Creole’ pigs – thepeasants’ emergency cash-in-hand.There they built homes with no regulatoryoversight, creating new slum areas and furtherweakening a fragile environment. This unplannedgrowth hindered the immediate rescue effortsbecause there were no access roads betweenstreets, just a patchwork of unmarked ‘corridors’.The capital’s eight municipalities which,before the quake, shared responsibility for citymanagement with numerous central governmentbodies, were even less sure of their rolesand mandates after the quake.“It was, in effect, the collapse of whatwas already a house of cards,” said CharlesClermont, who leads the government-appointedcommission charged with housing and relocation.“We didn’t even have communication. Ontop of that, we had to figure out how to communicatewith the international community. Theyhave their own rules of the game and we hadto figure out how to understand each other.”Much of the success of the reconstructionand recovery effort depends on involvingand engaging the Haitian people themselves.Quake survivors pulled people from the rubblemoments after it happened but they need towork together now and in the years ahead forthe long-term good of their communities. Haitiis limping from emergency to temporary shelterto reconstruction, a process that could takeseveral years before all the people affected bythe quake are re-housed. Some say it will takefive years; others say 25. World Disasters Report 2010 – Focus on urban risk23