United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
USAID is the United States government agency primarily responsible for foreign aid. As Indonesia is one of the most disaster prone areas, regularly experiencing various natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, landslides, volcanoes, flooding and drought, USAID aims at providing the necessary amount of foreign aid to such countries as Indonesia which are struggling to cope with their problems.
With communities in Indonesia facing such a constant risk of different hazards, levels of disaster response capacity change between different areas, posing a challenge for the Indonesian community to prepare for and respond to disasters. This is where USAID comes in. In addition to responding to disasters when they occur, USAID helps build local response capacity and also helps reduce risks associated with natural hazards in Indonesia. However, it must be noted that rather than directly helping Indonesia cope with the problems of natural disasters themselves, USAID instead provides help in the form of money. By sponsoring and proving lucrative funding to organizations that the government believes has the potential to help Indonesia, USAID continues to provide support to the people of Indonesia.
Figure 5.1: This is a column graph released by USAID which shows the number of times that the United States government has given Indonesia money to help them cope with a variety of disasters from the Financial Year of 1990 to the Financial Year of 2014. As shown, damage from earthquakes in particular require a lot of support from the government, largely due to the high destructive force that they have.
Source: http://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/1866/FactSheet_Indonesia_DRRR_2014.pdf
Source: http://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/1866/FactSheet_Indonesia_DRRR_2014.pdf
In order to better prepare Indonesia's disaster response capabilities, USAID has both regional Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) programs and Indonesia-specific Disaster Risk Reduction programs active in Indonesia. USAID manages most of these programs with the help of local and international organizations that it provides funding to:
USAID's Regional Disaster Risk Reduction Programs active in Indonesia:
Volcanic Monitoring and Response Assistance:
With support in the form of money from USAID, the United States Geological Survey has run the Volcanic Disaster Assistance Program (VDAP) since the 1990s. The program has allowed the U.S. government to provide technical assistance and respond to major volcanic eruptions in Indonesia including the 1993, 2006 and 2010 eruptions at Mt. Merapi. This support through funding is vital in providing basic assistance to Indonesians who have lost everything due to an eruption. In 2014, USAID provided an additional $330,000 in funding for the VDAP program in Indonesia so that the program could assist more areas and more people, while also providing technical consultation and remote sensing analysis during particular crises in that year Program for the Enhancement of Emergency Response (PEER):
Since 1998, USAID has supported PEER, a program funded by the U.S. government to train and develop a team of professional emergency response instructors. After being fully trained and qualified, these instructors are required to assist in organizing and to conduct training in medical first response for Indonesians living in areas that have been struck by disasters. Through the program, the instructors also learn how to conduct a search and rescue under collapsed structures and also specialize in preparing hospitals for mass casualties following a large disaster. In particular, PEER trained recruits have aided Indonesia in crises such as the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake/Tsunami as well as helping in the evacuation of the 2010 Mount Merapi Volcano eruption.
Improving Public Access to Disaster Preparedness Information:
USAID has also provided a large amount of funding to American Red Cross, a charity organization, which has developed many interactive applications for mobile devices to share first aid and disaster preparedness information in the past 5 years. The applications designed by Red Cross also communicate with existing early warning systems, to allow Indonesians using the application to possibly know earlier if their area is at risk of a large disaster.
USAID's Indonesia-Specific Disaster Risk Reduction Programs active in Indonesia:
Reducing Risks from Natural Disasters and Displacement:
Since 2004, USAID has been working with the International Organization of Migration (IOM) to help in the recovery and reconstruction of the Aceh Province in Indonesia, which was devastated by the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. Along with IOM, USAID has strengthened the disaster management capabilities of provincial, district and city disaster management officials in Aceh, and have also linked the communities of the province to other government and non-government disaster management organizations to encourage community participation in Disaster Risk Reduction planning. They have also been also providing basic necessities like food and water to those who suffered particularly harshly from the tsunami. This is a picture of a relief officer form USAID handing out a free item to an Indonesian
Source http://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/1866
/FactSheet_Indonesia_DRRR_2014.pdf
Indonesia Liquidity Facility after Disasters (The ILFAD Project)
USAID has provided continuous support to micro-finance institutions in Indonesia such as small rural banks and credit unions, since the U.S. government realizes that many poor households and small business owners require support from these institutions when they are devastated by natural disasters. USAID has provided many micro-finance institutions access to short term, post-disaster funding by providing a mechanism for emergency cash injections into these institutions during times of disaster. In total, USAID has provided over 1.6 million dollars in funding to these microfiche institutions, and has thus heavily aided many small families in their recovery from natural disasters.
Improvement of Agricultural Resilience and Reducing Disaster Risks
In 2014, USAID provided over 1.2 million dollars in funding to World Neighbours, an organization aiming to build and improve agricultural resilience after a disaster, as well as reducing the risk of injuries in disasters. As a result economic resilience to disasters has improved, food productions have strengthened and the capacity of provincial and district disasters agencies in Indonesia have improved.
Thanks to USAID's preparation and disaster risk reduction efforts, Indonesians have been, in the past decade, far better prepared to respond to disasters, and the country's economy has seen gradual improvements ever since. Instructors trained through the U.S. government's PEER project are capably providing assistance after disasters during emergencies, while the other community based Disaster Risk Reduction programs from USAID are allowing Indonesians to understand ways that they can mitigate risk, and improve their preparation for disasters.
Evaluation:
The approach that USAID has taken to solving Indonesia's problem with natural disasters is clear and simple; to spend a large amount of money funding projects, programs and organizations in Indonesia and thus improve the disaster response capacity across Indonesia. The effectiveness of their approach, both in the short and long term is very high.
In the short term, the US government agency's strong support of several micro-finance institutions is vital in providing immediate help to those who have lost everything due to a disaster. USAID understands that many of these people will come to these institutions looking for aid, and thus provides emergency cash injections for these institutions during times of disaster. The U.S. government's willingness to provide basic necessities such as food and water during times of disaster, for example in the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami and 2010 Mt. Merapi eruption, is also crucial in stabilising the lives of those who have lost their homes from the disasters. These programs have proved to extremely successful in providing immediate assistance to those who require it and also meets our criteria, and thus the short term successfulness of USAID's current programs is very high.
In the long term, the responses by USAID to help Indonesia continue to be useful, but are effective to a lesser extent than the short-term effectiveness of their plans. The free food and water provided, as well as the money that is borrowed from micro-financing institutions is only used to guide the people affected from natural disasters back on the right track, whether they'll succeed in the long run and return to their normal way of living is not guaranteed and thus the long term effectiveness of these solutions is somewhat limited. On the other hand, the PEER (Program for the Enhancement of Emergency Response) program is effective in the short term, but also continues to be very useful in the long term. The program aims to train a number of professional health instructors who specialize in disaster response to assist in places where a disaster has occurred. This program is extremely effective since the trained health instructors are reusable, meaning after they finish assisting in one area, they can be transferred to another area, and then another. Along with this, as the program continues to train more people, the Indonesian society will have a growing number of health professionals. Finally, as the program requires relatively little funding while producing excellent results in terms of improvement in risk reduction in Indonesia, while also been highly effective in the long term, it thus meets our criteria of sustainability, meaning USAID is successful not only for a temporary time, but their impact is instead long lasting.
Ultimately, the cost in proportion to effectiveness is at a moderate to high level. Figures from USAID show that in the Financial Year of 2012, they spent 170 million dollars altogether to assist Indonesia economically. Considering all the programs, projects and organizations that the United States government funds in Indonesia, the cost that is required to run such a large campaign to help Indonesia is completely understandable. Although the economy is gradually improving, Indonesia continues to be devastated by natural disasters every 5 years on average, meaning it continues to heavily rely on international support, such as that from USAID. However, USAID could make better use of its money, by putting more funding into projects that are obviously performing better, such as the PEER program.
USAID's responses in reducing the impact of natural disasters in Indonesia has satisfied all three of our criteria, and thus, their approach to the issue so far can be determined to be highly successful, meaning it is currently crucial in maintaining and possibly improving Indonesia's current situation.