The Tsunami Legacy: Innovation Breakthroughs and Change

The nations most affected by the tsunami – India, Indonesia, Maldives, Sri Lanka and Thailand – each adopted their own approaches to managing the specific circumstances that confronted them. Innovative solutions were identified to unique (but often common) challenges; solutions that deserve to be highlighted and known. The same is true for the mistakes: the complexity and scale of the task necessarily meant that not all efforts worked
as planned. As one of the biggest recovery and reconstruction efforts to date, the knowledge amassed by communities and recovery actors alike is both impressive and rich. But while there is no dearth of learnings from the post-tsunami recovery operations, these have not always been shared– the urgency of rebuilding and reconstructing having taken precedence.

Now, more than four years after the tsunami, as many organizations wrap up their recovery operations or begin to make the transition to more long-term projects, a unique opportunity presents itself for recovery partners to engage in cross-border learning: to take stock of the lessons learned and to share best practices. To mark the upcoming fifth anniversary of the disaster, the governments of these five countries agreed to work together to capture key lessons from their respective programmes as well as from some of the other countries affected by the tsunami.

This report is therefore an attempt to offer the global community an overview and some broad insights into how a huge cast of governments, organisations and people responded to one of the world’s great natural disasters. In so doing, it identifies some of the main elements involved: challenges, successes and lessons. It also is an attempt, not only to acknowledge the tremendous work of so many people who contributed to the recovery, but to thank the world for its enormous contributions to the devastated communities across the Indian Ocean
rim. What better way to thank those who dedicated their time and effort to helping affected countries and communities build back better, than ensuring that the world learns from our journey, avoids our pitfalls, and build on our success.