World Economic Forum meeting examines ways to ‘harness business response to disaster’
The World Economic Forum has published a summary of the above meeting which reads as follows (verbatim): This session examined the capabilities, responsibilities and limitations of corporate interventions during times of natural disaster. The past year, panellists were quick to note, provided an unusual number of natural disasters – in number and in scope. Corporations involved in helping with natural disaster response gave a barrage of different kinds of aid, including emergency response resources, pro bono services and of course donated money. How to evaluate their effectiveness? Is there a consensus on how corporations can better respond to natural disasters? Or is the work of emergency services best left to NGOs and governments? John K. Defterios, Group Vice-President, Content and Anchor, United Kingdom and Italy, FBC Television, United Kingdom, called on panellists to share their experiences, and he asked participants not to take too sceptical a view. “People look at corporate help sceptically; I think sometimes too sceptically," he judged. Focusing on the relationship between corporate donors and NGOs, governments and his own United Nations, Jan Egeland, Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), New York, located a potential "quantum step forward" in a future computer system, yet to be devised, that could instantly tell emergency response organizations what corporate resources are available. "We need to better predict what resources are available." While 2005 delivered an overwhelming number of natural disasters, many emergency response organizations are permanently overwhelmed by human need, lamented James T. Morris, Executive Director, UN World Food Programme, Rome, who cited the 300 million people who go hungry each day and the 20 million children orphaned by the AIDS epidemic. "These are ongoing disasters," he warned. In terms of corporate intervention, Morris commended the four business partners that donate resources to his organization. In particular, he singled out for praise Boston Consulting, which provided US$ 6 million in pro bono consulting services that "dramatically" improved the UN World Food Programme’s business processes. From the corporate perspective, what business brings to the table is not an ability to do natural disaster response better than the professionals in the field but the capacity building it can lend those professionals, said Michael S. Klein, Chief Executive Officer, Global Banking, Citigroup, USA. "When there is a surge – no NGO can handle it. But that’s precisely when you need it; if you’re not on site in the first few days you might as well not go." The Asian tsunami was a case in point. Citigroup had 20,000 local corporate suppliers in the tsunami zone. Klein related that it was simply a matter of some urgent phone calls to galvanize resources, from conference rooms to freight-forwarding operations, and put them to use to help people stricken by the disaster. John M. Allan, Chief Executive Officer, DHL Logistics, United Kingdom, has three disaster response teams among his employees ready for instant deployment around the world. Allan challenged participants not to view every endeavour through the prism of business school principles. "None of us has all the answers. Not everything can be solved with a business model," Allan asserted. Whichever model is used, the panel emphasized that more needs to be done, especially when it comes to rebuilding lives shredded by unforeseen disaster. Frequently, problems persist: housing is not rebuilt because titles to land are in dispute or because of environmental issues or any number of bureaucratic nightmares. Said the UN’s Engeland: "The world has never been better at saving people’s lives. But we are not a world community that is very good at recreating lives." Source: http://www.weforum.org/
•Date: 27th Jan 2006• Region: World • Type: Article •Topic: DR general |
