Recovery from a major natural or humanitarian catastrophe is always much more difficult than the short-term response. The emergency-response phase inspires action, leaving no doubt about what must be done — and quickly. Recovery, on the other hand, is an endurance test — maddening and full of debate and distraction.
In the aftermath of disasters, we have seen time and again a remarkable generosity of spirit in the response to the immediate needs. The urgent call to help is answered by nonprofits, businesses, and governments as well as countless individuals, especially those of modest means.
Case in point was Puerto Rico after the devastating Hurricane Maria made landfall in September. Maria did unprecedented damage to every system on the island and upended every aspect of life for the nearly three and a half million Americans who call Puerto Rico home.
But it also put the spotlight on needed change in the ways philanthropy, government, and society at large tackle the challenges of long-term recovery. A plan to be released tomorrow will point out the directions that are essential, and a partnership among Ford, where I lead our work to narrow economic inequality gaps, and the Open Society and Rockefeller foundations seeks to reimagine how we all help communities recover from disaster and neglect.
We are still learning about the full extent of the disaster in Puerto Rico. A recently released Harvard report puts the death count from the hurricane and its immediate aftermath at 4,645 — far greater than initially estimated. That extraordinary human cost reflects the collapse of essential services, such as power, health care, and safe drinking water, in the wake of the storm.
Crucial to the response and recovery have been those who left Puerto Rico over the years to move to the United States and elsewhere. Members of that diaspora delivered aid, even as many worried desperately about loved ones they couldn’t reach after the collapse of the island’s communications infrastructure. But aid came in from all quarters, from generous individuals and companies and foundations.
The Red Cross drew $65 million in donations, and GlobalGiving raised another $11 million; renowned chef and restaurateur José Andrés galvanized attention to the lack of power and the urgency of food insecurity by serving hot meals from food trucks and pop-up kitchens; the Maria Fund sprang to life, providing much-needed resources to community-based organizations serving the most vulnerable people; and the Hispanic Federation, a nonprofit membership organization, created the Amanece/Road to Recovery Fund to support grass-roots projects to tackle housing, agriculture, and energy challenges.
It was a timely outpouring of compassion and support at a critical time.
Elected leaders and emergency-management experts often remind us that this kind of “all-of-society” response is crucial, especially after major disasters. A critical role of private aid — whether it comes in the form of, say, blankets, food, or money — is to complement government efforts, to make sure that every potential gap is covered and every “last mile” bridged. To cite just one example, it often falls to community volunteers to find and help even the hardest-to-reach and most vulnerable survivors, including children, the elderly, and the disabled.
And that, sadly, is the point. In Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, unlike the model approaches that experts recommend, all this generous and creative private effort had to play a very different role: compensating for the utterly inadequate U.S. government response — from a famously bureaucratic and underequipped Federal Emergency Management Agency to the other civilian and military agencies called in to assist.
Paucity of Federal Aid
Thus far, the inadequacy of that response phase has carried over into the recovery. A credible estimate of damages not covered by private insurance or other sources is $94 billion. Yet Congress has appropriated just $20 billion for Puerto Rico recovery so far. And additional spending bills face serious hurdles this year. Congress is not only gridlocked but severely distracted, to put it mildly.
The challenges are immense, all the more because of two serious pre-storm handicaps: a deep, decade-long economic recession and a fiscal crisis that forced a restructuring of $72 billion of public debt and led Puerto Rico’s government to slash social services, health care, and other government spending.
In more normal circumstances, that spending would serve as a critical tool for stimulating economic recovery. The island’s jobless rate, at 10.3 percent, is near Depression levels. And the poverty rate now stands at 45 percent, or twice that of Mississippi.
But as an old island saying goes, No hay mal que por bien no venga — every bad brings with it some good; every cloud has a silver lining.
If we come together now, there is an extraordinary opportunity to use this moment of unprecedented challenge to help Puerto Rico’s communities and its leaders chart a more just and equitable future. The challenges are too severe to rebuild the island in a way that leaves the people of Puerto Rico in a fragile and precarious situation, exposed to the next coming storm.
A Blueprint for Action
In that spirit, we at the Ford Foundation have joined with the Rockefeller Foundation and Open Society Foundations to support an independent, nonpartisan effort called ReImagine Puerto Rico. It is led by Puerto Ricans and supported by experts and public engagement both on and off the island.
Tomorrow, ReImagine will release smart, actionable recommendations as a blueprint for the island to pursue a more resilient and equitable future.
Its recommendations aim to inform and focus the public, private, and nongovernmental investments that will shape that future and ensure a long-term, equitable recovery.
Bold, committed, and sustained philanthropy will be crucial to sparking action on a wide range of recommendations that affect every major system and sphere of activity on the island. Some of the most immediate are also the most systemic, for example securing the federal aid needed to sharply reduce the risks that Puerto Ricans face in their homes with each new hurricane season.
Katrina’s Lessons
We believe a core principle of the broader commitment must be to seek fairness and equity, not just generosity. In other words, we need to creatively support a recovery that does not simply ameliorate the symptoms of inequality but addresses their root causes.
Thankfully, we have road maps and working examples from other regions.
More than 12 years on from Hurricane Katrina, one of the worst storms to batter the Gulf states, we have seen how philanthropic leadership played an essential role in an equitable recovery — eventually tackling priorities such as housing affordability, racial gaps in employment and income, and even a vital criminal-justice overhaul.
These and other priorities aim directly at long-standing inequalities that were exacerbated by the natural disaster. Community leaders, including a growing number of women and young people of color, working together with state and local elected officials, have seized the opportunities provided by the recovery to press for deeper, more systemic reform and renewal.
Needless to say, there is no simple formula or one-size-fits-all approach that will suit every disaster-affected community from New Jersey to Texas to Hawaii.
But we do know it is as critical to strengthen a community’s civic capacity and civic infrastructure as it is to repair or rebuild the energy grid and damaged schools and hospitals. Much recovery planning and well-intended giving miss this basic reality: It is the long-run capacity of institutions and their ability to function together as an ecosystem that most determine the trajectory and the outcomes of recovery.
Transforming Philanthropy
Because pursuing equitable recovery will be a long road, where we will need the best ideas and savvy partnerships, the Ford Foundation and its national partners are supporting a critical “backbone” organization — the Network of Puerto Rico Foundations (La Red de Fundaciones de Puerto Rico).
La Red aims at nothing less than expanding and transforming the future of Puerto Rican philanthropy as part of transforming the island. For example, La Red is tackling head-on an overhaul of Puerto Rico’s fragmented system of land titling, which severely threatens housing recovery. Without the necessary land titles, Puerto Rico’s families and its government won’t be able to gain access to billions of dollars of federal recovery investment.
The immediate aftermath of a major disaster is often marked by inspired, if relatively short-term, private generosity. We should celebrate it, and we should always demand that government likewise play its essential role in disaster response — that “all of society” means society with its government, not society instead of effective government. But beyond that immediate response, philanthropy at its best can test and highlight bold and innovative solutions so that the best ones can be spread widely and also help civil society be a vibrant force for accountability.
The people of Puerto Rico have shown courage, not to mention astonishing patience and resourcefulness, in the face of great adversity and — sadly — official neglect. Now is the time to match that with the bold, patient, and committed philanthropy that would make real transformation possible.
Xavier de Souza Briggs is vice president of the Ford Foundation’s inclusive economies and markets program.
