A ripple in development? - Channel Research

effect at the time – coupled with some initial reluctance on the part of
donors and aid agencies to endanger the lives of their staff, tsunamiaffected
communities in the districts of Trincomalee, Batticaloa,
Ampara and Jaffna could not immediately receive the levels of assistance
received by people living in the south of the island.
Apart from such structural constraints, on the whole one can say
that the initiatives in both countries have only partly secured livelihood
security for the tsunami-affected. As Mulligan and Shawpoint out, in
Sri Lanka, “livelihood interventions have focused heavily on asset
replacement in the fisheries sector, while other occupations, particularly
those in which women predominate, have received substantially less
attention. Problems of market saturation have been compounded by
poorly-planned asset replacement initiatives which have little regard for
market conditions or the capacity and experience of recipients.”
It should be emphasised here that, as was the case for Indonesia,
the relative failure of post-tsunami livelihoods initiatives to enhance
long-term livelihood security is not due as much to ineffective project
implementation, as to the low understanding of the realities of the prevailing
context.
In Sri Lanka for instance, the excessive replacement of one-day
boats, best suited for fishing in shallow coastal waters, instead of a mix
of both one-day and multi-day boats has placed undue pressures on the
sustainability of the local economy and habitat.
In the Maldives, there has been an unprecedented investment by
aid agencies in infrastructure (non-existent prior to the tsunami) construction
for fisheries-related activities (fish markets, harbours, etc.) as
well as for waste disposal and management on the islands. However, this
evaluation found that in most cases, these facilities were lying abandoned
and unused – the fish markets were intended to be run by fisheries
cooperatives in a context where cooperatives have historically not
existed, while the construction of the latter was not accompanied by
any awareness-raising campaigns on hygiene and civic responsibility, or
the potential economic benefits of waste recycling.
This also holds true in the case of Sri Lanka where innumerable
schools, clinics, community centres, paddy storage centres etc. have
been built, or rebuilt, ostensibly at the request of the relevant line ministries,
without sufficient understanding of how these facilities will be
staffed, run and maintained in the long term.
3.6 Comparative weight and handover among actors
in Sri Lanka and the Maldives
In contrast to Aceh, where the government played a specific role in the
design and coordination of the relief and rehabilitation phase, there
was no such equivalent stated by the affected Sri Lankan communities.
In the specific case of conflict and tsunami affected areas, a positive role
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