Senior fellow Vijaya Ramachandran and research assistant Julie Walz are quoted in a Washington Post story about Haiti.
From the article:
Foreign aid
Roughly $12.4 billion has been pledged in private and international post-earthquake aid to Haiti through this year. At least a third of that total went toward emergency relief for earthquake victims: food, water, shelter, medical care and cash.
Whether the rest of the aid would have been enough to turn Port-au-Prince into a modern city is uncertain. The reconstruction of Chicago, San Francisco and many other disaster-damaged cities was financed by economic growth, not charity. Haiti’s stagnant economy assured that was not going to happen here. But there were other reasons, as well.
Less than a quarter of recovery aid (which could pay for long-term rebuilding) went to Haiti’s government, according to an analysis by the Center for Global Development, a Washington think tank. Charities, non-governmental organizations and contractors continued to be the main conduits for help and money. That has been true for decades, thanks to the country’s legendary instability and reputation for corruption. (Since 1806, 56 presidents have served, with fewer than a dozen completing their terms.) Governance has continued to be difficult. The current president, Michel Martelly, has had two prime ministers since taking office in May 2011.
Most experts say that a well-funded, strong national government — or its equivalent, such as an occupying army — is necessary to execute projects such as repaving streets, laying water and sewer lines, and forcing changes to lot sizes.
“Because the money went to NGOs, I don’t think it was ever realistically an option” to modernize Port-au-Prince, said Vijaya Ramachandran, an economist at the Center for Global Development and co-author of the report. “NGOs don’t work at the level of rebuilding cities.”
Her fellow author, Julie Walz, added, “You can’t rebuild an entire city through one project here, one project there.”
But you can rebuild a neighborhood.
Ravine Pintade is a 40-acre, V-shaped gash in the hills above downtown Port-au-Prince. It was poor and dangerous before the earthquake. The disaster did not make it more prosperous or safe. Rebuilding the area was a high priority for Haiti’s government because it was heavily damaged and many of the residents were living in a displaced-persons camp in a downtown park.
However, there was only enough money to rebuild one side of the ravine. The north side was chosen because CHF and PCI had “strong existing community relationships” there, Khachadurian said. As it turned out, that asymmetry was the source of recurrent trouble during the 17 months of reconstruction.
Participation was voluntary. People were not forced to get new dwellings if their own house was salvageable and they wanted to fix it up. Residents were consulted about design and were expected to find solutions to showstopping problems. When the project was finished in May, maintenance of common spaces and infrastructure became the residents’ responsibility.
The project engineers started with a test plot in which 30 house lots were cleared and new dwellings were built while the residents lived on-site in tents. It quickly became clear, however, that that strategy was not practical for the whole project. Hundreds of families would need to find temporary housing.
“We met with the community and said: ‘We need to start work on this date. What do we do?’ ” Khachadurian recalled.
It turned out that most people had friends or relatives with whom they could stay. For the few who did not, tent sites would be found.
Another big problem was that wider paths and outdoor places to sit were neighborhood priorities but there was not any unoccupied land for them. As the project evolved, 201 households agreed to reduce the size of their plots, 171 agreed to reshape them, and 51 agreed to share their plots with another family by living in two-story houses. “New” land was also created by building vertical retaining walls where dirt slopes had taken up space. “We were able to create huge changes in the public spaces, but it was adding up centimeters at a time,” Khachadurian said.
There were limits, however, to the project managers’ deference to local wishes.
The plan called for six water kiosks, where the public could buy chlorinated drinking water. Space was found for five. The only place the community could agree on for the sixth was was in the middle of a widened and rehabilitated road. The engineers said no. There are only five water kiosks now.