The public sector alone is not capable of providing ample support to people affected by a disaster.
It is also essential, so the argument goes, to enlist the participation of nonprofit and other private-sector groups.
The importance of public and private cooperation in disaster response has been stressed every time a calamity strikes. The reality, however, is a world away from the ideal.
A number of problems have been pointed out, including in the response to the Noto Peninsula earthquake of Jan. 1.
There are likely tasks to be addressed by both parties.
The private sector should work to expand the functions of intermediate support organizations, which coordinate the activities of individual support groups, so there will be no gaps or unevenness in the support being provided.
The public sector, for its part, should develop an awareness and a willingness for dealing with private-sector groups on an equal footing.
Efforts made in the aftermath of the Kumamoto Earthquakes of April 14 and 16, 2016, provide useful food for thought for expanding public-private cooperation.
Kumamoto Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (KVOAD), a nonprofit group set up in autumn 2016 six months after the quakes hit, is one of the leading intermediate support organizations in existence. It bills itself as a behind-the-scenes coordinator for diverse support groups.
KVOAD is the brainchild of information-sharing meetings that began to be held immediately following the quakes.
Members of nonprofit and other groups, based both within and outside Kumamoto Prefecture, met voluntarily to share the circumstances and the needs of disaster survivors in various areas to discuss what they could do.
They asked the prefectural and municipal governments of Kumamoto, as well as social welfare councils that are responsible for assigning individual volunteer workers to their posts, to participate in the meetings, which were held daily for two months.
“We gradually forged ties as we saw each other face to face,” said Tsutomu Higuchi, 63, the KVOAD head director, who called for the meetings to be held.
The public sector went along with Higuchi and his colleagues’ proposals.
The Kumamoto prefectural authorities created, and made available in the prefectural government building, a base of operations for private-sector groups, which become a “hangout” for officials from the public and private sectors and from within and outside the prefecture.
Every time that private-sector workers raised an issue, prefectural officials, who acted as the contact with them, conveyed that to members of the department in charge, which helped nurture awareness within the prefectural authorities for giving more thought to the private sector, officials said.
The meetings continue to be held to this day, even though their frequency has varied depending on the circumstances. They have been held 434 times by early April and counting.
Those meetings served as a base of support activities during the July 2020 downpours, which heavily affected Kumamoto Prefecture, and the novel coronavirus pandemic of 2020-2023.
Continuity is therefore another lesson to be drawn from the experiences in Kumamoto Prefecture.
The practice of holding information-sharing meetings in disaster-affected areas has become customary in recent years, but intermediate support organizations have played active roles in only a handful of instances.
Such groups tend to be understaffed because they are inconspicuous in their role of coordinators in the eyes of outsiders and they therefore have a hard time raising donations and generating membership fees.
Hopes should be pinned, in the first place, on private-sector initiatives for expanding the functions of similar groups.
A project is under way with the participation of 20 or so intermediate support organizations across Japan, including KVOAD, for strengthening the base of public-private cooperation.
Participants of the project have interviewed central and local government officials as well as other experts and have organized study sessions on a subject-by-subject basis, including on evacuation centers and on temporary housing.
They have set the goal of working out a training program and guidelines.
The project has earned a grant from an incorporated administrative agency of the central government. There should be more attempts by the public sector to provide assistance to self-help efforts of the private sector.
Both sectors should cooperate in disaster response not only on the prefectural but also on the municipal levels.
Let us begin, as a first step, with drawing lessons from available examples.
--The Asahi Shimbun, April 17
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