A ripple in development? - Channel Research

Yet the potential for change is created by the tsunami itself. As
noted in the documentary review, in the Maldives a “significant number
of households have changed their livelihoods after the tsunami” 50 . One
of the factors that this can be attributed to is that there are still many
families in the process of being relocated from transitional shelters to
new houses on ‘safer’ islands. While their shelter and infrastructure
needs are being catered to, the livelihood activities they have been pursuing
for the last four years face disruption and re-adjustment during
the relocation process. No organisations have emerged to support this
transition in a comprehensive way.
3.7 Conclusion
The evaluation finds that underneath the renewed economic development
in the three affected countries after the tsunami, the actual targeting
of the poorest groups by aid efforts has not been very strong. There
has been extensive evidence of rapid asset replacement by relief actors,
but generally NGOs have not been well equipped to deal with a complex
local economy to achieve long term opportunities. As a consequence
the state has become the main provider of support, while it is
itself confronted with severe resource constraints.
While many of the programmes have attempted to give fishermen
the training and tools to fish, rather than just supply relief food, to coin
an old adage, they have mostly failed to achieve sustainable local livelihoods.
Larger industrial programmes have remained remote from the
economy that is accessible to the broader population in tsunami affected
areas.
Had donor projects handled by NGOs been given a longer horizon
than the one to three year timeframe commonly available for humanitarian
work, one can reasonably assume that the LRRD would have
been more effective in improving the livelihood security of tsunami
affected households. There is a clear need here for larger scale programmes
to undertake more detailed poverty analysis as well as generate
the missing link between local livelihoods and national development.
50
UNDP et al., 2007, p.34
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