By Christopher Kelly and Michael Delurey
In recent years, we have become all too familiar with disaster: Hurricane Katrina. The Sichuan earthquake. California's raging wildfires. The Indian Ocean tsunami. Myanmar's tropical cyclone. The images are seared into our collective consciousness: broken levees and flooded attics; mothers digging through rubble in search of their children; entire villages swept into the ocean. Whether in Sri Lanka or San Diego, China or Louisiana, these disasters are humbling reminders of the power of nature—and clarion calls to action.
Like the other crises that face us—terrorism, climate change, pandemics, water scarcity—natural disasters are increasing in scope and complexity; both a cause and a symptom of our interconnected world. And like these other crises, coping with disaster requires a cooperative, innovative "megacommunity" approach that spans every sector of society.
The megacommunity model—in which organizations unite across sectors to reach goals they cannot achieve alone—capitalizes on the inherent strengths of government, business and civil society; blending sector-specific advantages into a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Although any organization in any sector can initiate a megacommunity, it is immeasurably helpful for government to play a pivotal, if not leading, role—especially in the case of disaster.
Particularly in the initial stages, the complex challenges posed by disaster calls for one group or sector to align and coordinate the actions of the various players. When logistics are mired in regulatory quicksand, government is the sector with "first mover" status; it also has the power of the proverbial bully pulpit. And the government may be the only possible initiator when the issue is simply too huge and immediate, too amorphous and far-reaching, to be handled by any other entity.
Indeed, government involvement and support can be the difference between chaos and organization; languishing supplies and speedy delivery; casualties and survival. One only has to look at government's ability to impede disaster relief efforts to understand the magnitude of the influence it can wield. Consider the recent disaster in Myanmar where, for so many weeks, the government refused to play an initiator role.
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