Namibia PDNA 2009 - GFDRR

6.1
Recovery and Reconstruction Strategy
The Damage and Loss Assessment (DaLA) forms the basis for a comprehensive recovery and reconstruction strategy that combine
medium and long-term needs.
The medium-term needs (2nd phase) look at the restoration of the essential economic activities as they were before the disaster.
It focuses on reconstruction of damaged assets that are urgently needed to resume economic activities (housing, roads, water and
sanitation) and on economic recovery in sectors whose production has been stopped during the flood (agriculture, manufacture and
trade), as well as on livelihood recovery.
For example, damaged roads and other transport lines are repaired on an emergency basis, power is restored, commercial activities
assisted to resume and factories brought back to production, agricultural productivity rehabilitated, and livelihood restored through
income generation activities. From the infrastructure point of view, the function is rebuilt so that the vehicles can circulate and the
people can have access to electricity, clean water and have a roof. In that phase, there is no time to think and plan differently.
The long-terms needs (3rd phase) look at reconstructing infrastructure differently (or “better”) to make them less vulnerable to
future disaster and at improving the resilience to disaster of important economic sector, such as for example agriculture in the north
and central Regions of Namibia.
Reconstruction after a flood often sowed the seeds for destruction from disasters in the future, when vulnerabilities are reconstructed.
Therefore, the aftermath of a flood provides opportunities to address historical vulnerabilities, such as opening drainage ditches,
voluntary resettlement away from flood plains and the protection of existing structure. The location of houses, water points, sewerage
ponds, schools, medical facilities can also be improved.
In addition to reduce vulnerability, there is also a possibility to factor in changes in external conditions such as urbanization, climate
change (the two main crops that are cultivated in the six affected Regions are resistant to drought not to flood) or the apparition of
markets for agricultural product. This will help develop commercial agriculture.
Medium-Term Recovery and
6.2
Reconstruction Needs (Phase 2)
The PDNA proposed main activities in that first phase are in the following areas:
1. Livelihood recovery: support communities through a cash for work programme (income generation) to repair to basic
services.
2. Economic recovery: support agriculture recovery through seeds and other inputs and support private sectors recovery,
especially small and agro-businesses, through soft-term financing to restart production.
Reconstructing physical assets: replace damaged infrastructure (repair of houses and building, schools and hospitals, roads and water
and sanitation systems) to their pre-disaster conditions. For houses and building, it includes construction material to reconstruct
houses and damaged household latrines and also credit to rebuilt commerce and industry premises. For roads it includes building
critical culverts and bridges. For water and sanitation it includes the repair of pipes, wells, dams, and tanks, the cleaning up and
rehabilitation of the open canal, and the rehabilitation of sewerage ponds.
The estimated cost of Phase 2 is N$1.12 billion (US$138.6 million), which consists of N$0.32 billion in economic recovery (US$39.3
million) and N$0.80 billion (93.3) in reconstruction of physical assets (See Figure 35 for a breakdown per sector). The income
generation activity is designed to compensate the loss of income calculated in Section 3.2.
In the medium term, these recovery activities are led by the public sector and reconstruction activities are led by the private sector:
indeed, 70 percent of the medium-term recovery costs is borne by the Government and its development partners, agriculture
recovery and income generation forming the bulk of it, while 70 percent of the medium-term reconstruction cost is borne by the
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Namibia POST-DISASTER NEEDS ASSESSMENT