A ripple in development? - Long term perspectives on the response to the Indian Ocean tsunami 2004 - A joint follow-up evaluation of the links between relief, rehabilitation and development (LRRD)

This evaluation was commissioned by a group of governments from the region, aid donors and other organisations to review the relevance and the effectiveness of interactions between the interventions to help the populations in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and the Maldives to recover from the 2004 tsunami. The evaluation was carried out at the end of 2008 and early 2009 by a team of independent consultants, covering separately five sets of issues: the roles of the states and civil society, livelihoods and poverty, social relations, disaster risk mitigation, and capacity building. It was composed of a review of some 600 documents and annotated bibliography, a qualitative field research process, and a quantitative survey of the affected populations. It covered the work of NGOs, UN agencies, donor and national governments, but also civil society and community initiatives. The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and the resulting tsunami prompted exceptional expressions of human solidarity in the coastal areas of these three countries, in which an estimated US$13 billion was donated (a good part of which given directly by individuals), predominantly in 2005–06. Over 225,000 lives had been lost in the space of a few hours. This single event interacted with extremely different conditions on the ground and provides important lessons for the future.

Objectives: To contribute to learning from a large scale and complicated disaster, particularly about modes of planning and operation by different actors. It is desirable to have conclusions and lessons learned from the tsunami disaster that may be applied to similar situations in the future.