A ripple in development? - Channel Research

The finding is that the donors have been unable to link disaster
response with development plans when those development plans have
fallen ‘outside of the box’, i.e., where those places suffering from chronic
marginalisation receive less assistance because they are not national
development priorities. There is a de facto triage, even where there is a
huge amount of resources available.
As financial aid flows are recorded under the economic development
sector budget line, it is extremely difficult to trace how this aid is
transmitted to households for livelihoods recovery. This is because at the
macro level, this sector has many indicators as defined by the national
government and covers many types of interventions. Also it is difficult
to make a distinction between public-private partnerships. In general,
most of these interventions are categorised in terms of large scale reconstruction
programmes which can be justified as providing public goods
for economic activities, be it small scale or large scale. But these reconstruction
interventions do not directly create outcomes that can be
traced to the households met during the survey (for which sampling had
been extensive).
3.4 Roles of NGOs for livelihoods in Aceh and Nias
As per the LRRD2 quantitative survey, the highest percentage of
respondents, 21%, stated that they rely on friends and relatives for
securing jobs. Aid agencies and their programmes were not named as
being the main source of job creation. As such, it can be argued that
while reconstruction programmes are conducive to job creation, it is
market mechanisms and private initiatives that determine whether individuals
can secure jobs This is regardless of whether these jobs can be
sustained in the long term or are just related to day-to-day casual labour.
This is because the labour market remains severely under-developed in
terms of the number of firms available to generate demand for wage
labour.
Using the livelihood group history approach, some light can be
shed on the macro-micro level economic development/household livelihood
relationship. The following findings are thus used to address the
question “what are the perspectives of the household concerning efforts
made to support its livelihood recovery?”
When collecting the household histories, attempts were made to
trace patterns of household income generating activities and consumption,
as well as seasonal factors that influence livelihood activities e.g.
harvesting. But these attempts were by and large unsuccessful as households
were not able to recall livelihood changes in a linear manner, in
other words what change first happened in 2005, and then in 2006, and
so forth. The household histories were consequently recorded in a nonlinear
manner.
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