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East Asia & Pacific is facing some great development challenges today: urbanization, protection of the environment, the need to find renewable energy sources and many others. This site wants to create a conversation around those important issues. More »

Communities and Human Settlements

Samoa after the disaster: The wave of fire and the kid called Tsunami

Submitted by Aleta Moriarty on Thu, 2012-03-22 23:00

In June 2009 Samoa was the set for the popular TV program Survivor. It was a fantastic choice. It is one of those picture-perfect places–shady palms, trees dripping with fruit, blossoming hibiscus, all framed by powder sand beaches. It is a vastly understated paradise.

A few months later, the country was once again centre stage. This time for something utterly distressing and heart-breaking as the country embarked on the harrowing search for real life survivors after they were struck by a powerful tsunami on 29 September 2009.

Galu afi means “wave of fire” and is the traditional Samoan word used to describe a tsunami. It describes the force that gains momentum as the wave generates and the sheer destruction that it brings to bear. That is what happened here.

Tujuh tahun kemudian: Mengingat tsunami di Aceh

Submitted by Dave Lawrence on Mon, 2012-01-02 01:14

Juga tersedia di English

Jumlahnya terus meningkat. Pada awalnya dilaporkan 13.000 jiwa. Keesokan harinya menjadi 25.000. Lalu dilaporkan kembali 58.000. Di penghujung minggu, pada tanggal 1 Januari 2005, jumlah korban tsunami di Asia telah mencapai 122.000. Dan jumlah tersebut terus meningkat, tidak ada satu orang pun yang tahu kapan jumlah tersebut akan berhenti meningkat.

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

 
 

Seven years on: Remembering the tsunami in Aceh, Indonesia

Submitted by Dave Lawrence on Sat, 2011-12-24 13:43

Also available in Bahasa

The number just kept getting bigger and bigger. At first it was a staggering 13,000. The next day, over 25,000. And then, 58,000. By the end of the week, on January 1st, 2005, the death toll of the Asian Tsunami had reached 122,000. Yet the number kept climbing, and nobody knew when it would stop. 

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

 
 

Our home, our village, we shall rebuild it

Submitted by Nugroho Nurdikiawan Sunjoyo on Tue, 2011-11-15 15:56

Available in Bahasa

In September this year I visited a number of communities in Yogyakarta, in Java, Indonesia, who were rebuilding their lives and homes after experiencing a series of natural disasters. The reconstruction process which I saw is perhaps in example of post-disaster community participation at their best.

Our home, our village, we shall rebuild it

Rumah kami, desa kami, kami akan bangun kembali

Submitted by Nugroho Nurdikiawan Sunjoyo on Tue, 2011-11-15 15:52

Juga tersedia di English

Pada bulan September tahun ini, saya mengungjungi masyarakat beberapa desa di Yogyakarta yang tengah membangun kembali rumah dan kehidupan mereka setelah mengalami serangkaian bencana alam. Pembangunan kembali yang saya lihat merupakan contoh bagaimana masyarakat bisa berpartisipasi dalam situasi pasca bencana.

Rumah kami, desa kami, kami akan bangun kembali

Crisis Camp: another face of humanitarian relief

Submitted by Aleta Moriarty on Tue, 2010-09-07 11:20

The room was deathly quiet apart from the tap-tap-tap of volunteers diligently clacking away at their keyboards. It could have been a library or students studying for exams but appearances are deceptive. It was a Crisis Camp—a gathering of volunteer tech heads who had pulled together for the weekend to build critical mapping data to help Pakistani flood victims.

Usually, when we think of humanitarian relief, images of food drops or internally displaced persons (IDP) camps first come to mind but there is a whole world of altruism that has emerged which is helping behind the scenes in times of crises. Detailed maps are critical to delivering humanitarian relief to the millions of Pakistanis that have been affected by flooding.

What difference do 16.5 kms of rural roads make? An answer from the effect of NT2 revenues in Laos

Submitted by Victoria Minoian on Wed, 2010-07-07 05:02
The author at one of the roads renovated with NT2 funds (2010 rainy season).

Last week I hopped on one of our office cars and led into the Southern province of Champassack, along with our filming crew, to collect some stories related to the recent roads improvements made out of the NT2 Revenues (386kb pdf). Following the sale of electricity to neighboring Thailand in early March, monies have started to flow into the National Treasury of Laos.

As the reader and follower of NT2 may know, the project offers a Revenue Management Agreement (24.46mb pdf) component which has been designed to strengthen the overall Government of Lao’s Public Financial Management Program. For the specific case of NT2, the Program was implemented via budget classification and monitoring systems, physical progress of expenditures at the sector ministries of the identified eligible programs where the monies are allocated and increased capacities to conduct expenditure audits, among others.

Nam Theun 2 – How are the resettled people doing overall? In their own words… (part 2 of 2)

Submitted by Nina Fenton on Tue, 2010-03-30 02:07

In the last blog we saw that most resettlers are broadly satisfied with the resettlement process and are positive and optimistic about their lives as a whole. But…how do they feel about their lives in comparison to the very different world they lived in before relocation? What are the changes they value or regret?
 
The respondents were asked directly how they felt about life now compared with life before resettlement. The overwhelming majority think that life has got much better, and that the vulnerable households are even more likely to feel this way than the non-vulnerable—no vulnerable households felt that life had got worse.

Nam Theun 2 – How are the resettled people doing overall? In their own words… (part 1 of 2)

Submitted by Nina Fenton on Mon, 2010-03-29 03:15

In last week’s blog I showed that, when we examine consumption—a commonly used measure of household welfare—the resettled households appear to be doing relatively well, and much better than before resettlement. But economic circumstances are just one small part of what really matters to households. In order to get closer to a broader picture of “well-being”, I’m going to present some evidence of how these households themselves view their lives overall and how they feel about the changes going on around them. I hope that this will provide new insights to the question of “how are the resettled people doing overall?”

Nam Theun 2 – how are resettled people doing? (a note on epistemology, or what we can and can’t learn using socioeconomic data)

Submitted by Nina Fenton on Thu, 2010-03-25 21:56

On the Nakai plateau, a large proportion of income is non-monetary. If we fail to account for this income, we grossly underestimate the living standards of most households. (WB photo)

In my last blog I presented an initial look at how the resettled households are doing overall. But now that I’ve hopefully satisfied some of your curiosity on the big picture, I’d like to go back and talk in a little more detail about the data that I’m using here, and what it can tell us.

Economics is often (and sometimes fairly!), maligned for its reliance on assumptions. But the reality is that it is impossible to even start analyzing a situation like that on Nakai without making some assumptions about how progress can be measured, and using data which is inevitably a simplification of a complex, multi-faceted reality. Even though we are working with the best data available, the honest thing to do is to be upfront and honest about what we can, and cannot, know about how people are doing, with socioeconomic data in general, and the Nakai Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) in particular.