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GOVERNMENTAL-INSTITUTIONAL RESPONSE to the 1997-1998 ENSO
Methodologist Robert Yin (1994) once noted that the most serious problem with case studies is their tendency to get caught up in the storytelling and lose their focus-to wander analytically. His suggested solution was to constantly remind oneself of the original unit of analysis and thereby maintain its centrality. For our purposes here, given how complex and fascinating ENSOs are, that ad-vice is especially relevant. Our unit of analysis in this three-case comparative study remains civil defense in the three Andean countries and the role(s) it played-and did not play-in the 1997-1998 ENSO event.
Ecuador
Literally on the first text pages of its damage assessment report for Ecuador, the CEPAL team profiled the context of the 1997-1998 ENSO, which was highly problematic economically and politically:
Ecuador is confronting adverse internal and external situations that complicate the possibility of easily overcoming [ENSO] damages. Externally, the significant drop in the price of oil has cut export earnings and government revenue to the point that even budgeted expenditures cannot be met. Internally, a change in leadership of the national government has created natural uncertainty and held up any systematic and vigorous rehabilitation and reconstruction efforts. [CEPAL, 1998, pp. 3-4]
The CEPAL report was actually quite under-stated. Suffering an annual inflation rate of approximately 30%, Ecuador was also in debt payment arrears to the Club of Paris. Economic austerity reforms attempted in 1996 soon led to a social and political crisis, and in February 1997, the Ecuadorean Congress impeached and dismissed President Abdalá Bucaram (whose erratic personal behavior contributed to his problems). The Congress then named an interim president, Fabián Alarcón, to finish the term (18 months)-which meant that the developing ENSO occurred with a weak, temporary president in a highly charged electoral environment. Even in early 1997 the major parties and candidates were gearing up for the June-July 1998 round of presidential elections. The timing guaranteed that ENSO would become a campaign issue, and indeed it did, especially because one of the final two candidates came from the coast (Guayaquil). According to close political observers, this candidate, Gustavo Noboa, advanced to the final round in part because he capitalized on "Quito's" poor management of ENSO problems.*
* Authors' note: Interestingly, Noboa lost the election but would be installed as president after a January 2000 coup d'etat.
More concretely, the extent to which a disaster becomes politicized is generally a function of the domestic media coverage it is afforded. We took a 13-month period (June 1, 1997, to July 31, 1998) and tracked the ENSO-related stories in Ecuador's two major dailies (Última Hora, Hoy), as shown in Table 1 and Figure 1. With more than 1,500 stories, the 1997-1998 ENSO presented clear opportunities for political maneuvering.
| Number of ENSO-Related Stories: June 1, 1997, to June 31, 1998 |
|
| Month | Number of Stories |
| June 1997 | 37 |
| July 1997 | 49 |
| August 1997 | 53 |
| September 1997 | 147 |
| October 1997 | 132 |
| November 1997 | 146 |
| December 1997 | 170 |
| January 1998 | 200 |
| February 1998 | 212 |
| March 1998 | 146 |
| April 1998 | 121 |
| May 1998 | 82 |
| June 1998 | 14 |
| TOTAL | 1509 |
In truth, Ecuadorean electoral politics has historically lent little stability to the political system, and the words "effective government" and "Ecuador" have seldom been used in the same sentence. The government of Ecuador's administrative incoherence, however, was especially marked with the appearance of initial ENSO signs in mid-1997. Approved by the president of Ecuador, a closely held (40 copies only) Plan Institucional was developed to begin planning how to manage anticipated ENSO effects. Neither Ecuador Civil Defense nor any of the supposedly involved ministries, however, was able to secure a copy of the plan.
On July 2, 1997, the government of Ecuador declared a state of national emergency, charging Ecuador Civil Defense (Dirección Na-cional de Defensa Civil, DNDC) with developing a contingency plan (Plan de Contingencias Niño 1997) to manage ENSO effects. Mandating the creation of a contingency plan obviously also meant that the government lacked a pre-existing ENSO plan, and it is always more difficult to devise a plan while you are simultaneously trying to organize response. The plan was to be developed with the cooperation of CONADE (Consejo Nacional de Desarrollo, the national development council), the planning and security offices of the various ministries, and other state organs.
At the end of September 1997, the (August) Plan Institucional, now also called the Plan de Contingencias para Afrontar el Fenómeno del Niño, was presented to the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and the Corporación Andina de Fomento (CAF, Andean Development Corporation, a regional inter-national financial institution). It carried a budget of slightly more than US$65 million, of which US$6.4 million were to come from the government of Ecuador itself. This plan, however, failed to indicate how the government portion would be sourced or financed.
A day earlier, however, and also approved by the Office of the President, another Plan de Contingencias para Afrontar el Fenómeno del Niño (the one prepared by Ecuador Civil Defense, CONADE, and other offices and ministries) was forwarded to the World Bank, IDB, and CAF. Highly general (it had categories of activities but lacked specific project information), this plan carried a budget of US$290 million, to be financed by the three external international financial institutions.
Inexplicably, neither plan mentioned the other one, although both had been approved by the Office of the President.
In an apparent attempt to put some order into its ENSO planning, on October 13, 1997, the government created COPEFEN (Unidad Coordinadora del Programa de Emergencia para Afrontar el Fenómeno El Niño, the Coordinating Office for the El Niño Emergency). Based in the Office of the President, COPEFEN was to coordinate the implementation of all activities in the Plan de Contingencias (the second one, the first having disappeared). The problem was that Ecuador Civil Defense had no operational relationship to this new entity, and for its part COPEFEN had no operational capability of its own. Indeed, it was not until April 1998-six months after its creation-that COPEFEN was given the necessary legal and financial authority to carry out operations.
The relationship between Ecuador Civil Defense and COPEFEN was therefore problematic from the start, and a serious bureaucratic battle quickly developed over which was "in charge" of responding to ENSO. In late 1997, in a memo record of a conversation with a USAID representative, an official of a friendly donor government
expressed concern over the public confrontation, reported in national newspapers, between Defensa Civil and the Unidad Coordinadora. The official noted that . . . [Coordinadora director] Luis Carrera de la Torre assured [him] that he (Carrera) was still in charge of overall El Niño coordination efforts. Nevertheless, Carrera admitted that the Unidad Coordinadora simply lacked the ability to deliver resources to areas impacted by El Niño.
Thus, the government of Ecuador had an existing organization, Ecuador Civil Defense, that had operational capabilities but lacked the political weight and administrative leadership to coordinate the various ministries. The government then created the Coordinadora, which in theory at least had the required political connections (through its base in the presidency) to actually coordinate across ministries, but it lacked operational capabilities. Instead of complementing each other, these two entities then began months of rivalry in which no one, including the donor community, knew "who was on first." Therefore, with 1) COPEFEN theoretically charged with leading but unable to carry out operations, 2) a civil defense system capable of operations but not of leading, and 3) a disjuncture between the two, Ecuador had the worst of both.
In March 1998, however, the situation improved-but for a very negative reason. The director of COPEFEN, Carrera de la Torre, was charged with corruption in the misappropriation of relief supplies coming from Miami. He went into hiding but was replaced, however, by an able political leader (a former governor) from the coast, Antonio Andreta Arizaga, who improved communication (holding weekly meetings) and relations with Ecuador Civil Defense. Under Andreta Arizaga, COPEFEN also increased representation from, and opened an office on, the coast (in Guayaquil), bringing it much closer to the affected areas and reducing its "Quito" image.
The context for managing ENSO then became even more complex. Interim President Alarcón had earlier convoked a Constituent Assembly to draft a new constitution, but when, on its own, the assembly decided to extend its time and increase its mandate, Alarcón dissolved it and shut down its meeting site, creating a political and legal crisis. Student demonstrations also erupted over increased tuition, and anti-government protests were reported in the provinces most affected by ENSO. Strikes and marches were especially noteworthy in the province hardest-hit by the 1997-1998 ENSO (Manabi), and, for a time, the government seriously considered declaring martial law there.
At this point another layer was added to government's attempts to manage the 1997-1998 ENSO. Given the wide open political situation, the sitting vice president of Ecuador resigned to run for the presidency, and on April 24, 1998, Interim President Alarcón named a former governor of Guayas province (on the coast), Pedro Aguayo Cubillo, as the new vice president of Ecuador. In his new post, however, Aguayo was also assigned responsibility for "coordinating government activities to confront the emergency and plan reconstruction in areas affected by [ENSO]," thus creating yet another ENSO coordinating entity. COPEFEN was now supposed to report to the Office of the Vice Presidency. An internal re-port from a donor government profiled the situation in late June 1998 this way:
The duplication of functions within the state shows institutional waste, loss of credibility with donors and financial institutions, and above all delay in responding to the immedi-ate and middle-term needs of the [ENSO-affected] communities.
Nonetheless, as the 1997-1998 ENSO began to wind down, Vice President Aguayo went to Washington and presented an interesting idea at a World Bank meeting on ENSO:
Ecuador proposes to establish in the Vice Presidency of the Republic a [permanent] "National System for Risk Management," with an eminent technical team . . . to ensure that risk variables are incorporated in planning infrastructure development, territorial [development] policies, construction codes, as well as in development planning for urban areas.
Given the multiple risks to which Ecuador is subject, this proposal for an entirely new, relatively high-profile, and broadly mandated "na-ional emergency organization" makes perfect sense. In theory at least, this organizational innovation was close to ideal. The problem was the political timing and context; Aguayo made this proposal 40 days before a new government was to take office (August 8, 1998), and the tradition is for incoming Ecuadorean administrations to downplay, if not completely ignore, any ideas or proposals from the departing administration. So the government of Ecuador will remain with a layered but duplicative emergency response structure with two of the three layers temporary and only one layer permanent-the lowest and the one marginalized during the 1997-1998 ENSO (Ecuador Civil Defense).
Interestingly, further complicating institutional response to the 1997-1998 ENSO, incoming President Jamil Mahuad Witt created yet another authority responsible for reconstruction in ENSO-affected areas, CORP-ECUADOR, without, however, dissolving COPEFEN and/or clarifying the role and responsibilities of Ecuador Civil Defense.
Reflecting on the government of Peru's response to the 1997-1998 ENSO, a close observer of the Peruvian political scene offered this contextual observation in an interview with the lead author of this monograph in late 1997:
You have to understand something. Every-thing, absolutely everything, that goes on in this country revolves around Fujimori's campaign for [re-election in] 2000, and that includes El Niño, which became very political here. Great photo-ops, if it doesn't backfire.
Virtually the same point was made in the EIU's fourth quarter 1997 Peru report:
The El Niño climatic phenomenon could be a key factor in determining his [Fujimori's] support in the coming year. If damage is less than expected, he could benefit by claming credit for preparatory public works. If it is severe, he could be blamed for the weakness in preparations despite the efforts made, and face accusations of fiscal imprudence.
To illustrate the extraordinary degree to which the 1997-1998 ENSO became political, Table 2 and Figure 2 present the story counts (totaled) in three major Peruvian dailies (El Comercio, Expreso, La República), again over the 13-month period (more than 4,000 stories appeared in the local press).
| Number of ENSO-Related Stories: June 1, 1997, to July 31, 1998 |
|
| Month | Number of Stories |
| June 1997 | 160 |
| July 1997 | 166 |
| August 1997 | 238 |
| September 1997 | 266 |
| October 1997 | 198 |
| November 1997 | 157 |
| December 1997 | 316 |
| January 1998 | 577 |
| February 1998 | 853 |
| March 1998 | 664 |
| April 1998 | 241 |
| May 1998 | 148 |
| June 1998 | 134 |
| July 1998 | 104 |
| TOTAL | 4222 |
Fujimori had become president of Peru in July 1990 as the quintessential outsider, harboring a profound distrust of the traditional Peruvian elite, political parties, and the established system of government. Indeed, he led an "auto coup" in April 1992 that dissolved the Peruvian Congress and gave him virtually authoritarian control of the country. Therefore, he has strong centralist preferences, and his "style" can best be described as populist and direct action, avoiding use of the normal a-ministrative apparatus.
Consistent with this orientation, the Fujimori government's first organizational action was not to convoke the national civil defense system (in place since 1972), headed by Instituto Nacional de Defensa Civil (INDECI, the National Civil Defense Institute). Rather, in June 1997 it created a Comisión Nacional de Acciones de Emergencia (CONAE, National Commission for Emergency Action), an ad hoc cabinet-level group from the ministries of Transport, Communication, Housing and Construction, Agriculture, and Defense. The organizational base for CONAE was Fujimori's own Ministerio de la Presidencia (MIPRE, the Ministry of the Presidency). INDECI (Peruvian Civil Defense) was conspicuously absent from CONAE (inexplicably so was the Ministry of Health). A month later, in July, INDECI was brought into the CONAE structure-but only as the Secretario Técnico (Technical Secretariat-essentially staff).
Thus bypassing INDECI and even local government, President Fujimori-with considerable fanfare and publicity-personally led and used MIPRE and CONAE to carry out the prevention efforts. To the extent that local units of government were involved, Fujimori used the Consejos Transitorios de Adminstración Regional (CTARs, Transitional Regional Administrative Councils). Created, appointed, staffed, and funded by the Fujimori administration in Lima, these CTARs had been superimposed on provincial and local governments in the early 1990s as a way to "depoliticize" administration of the country. Therefore, between MIPRE, CONAE, and a region's CTAR, the Fujimori government marginalized not only INDECI but also elected local officials, local political leaders, many NGOs, and civil society. In the words of one observer, "responding to El Niño became a one ring circus-Fujimori's." The marked tendency of the Fujimori administration to attempt central control of everything was noted early by the EIU in its fourth quarter 1997 Peru report (p. 13):
Preparations for the heavy rains in the north of the country and droughts in the south, which are expected to accompany the El Niño weather pattern in the coming months, have been allocated a special budget. This expenditure has been introduced through Decretos de Urgencia (emergency decrees), and the spending will be administered by the presidency, which already controls 40% of the central government budget. As such, the spending will increase the centralisation of control of spending and diminish budgetary transparency.
Various field visits to ENSO-impacted areas in late 1997 and 1998 confirmed that essentially two local governments coexisted. Most municipios had an elected government (with local knowledge and contacts but with scarce and tightly controlled resources) and an office of the centrally appointed CTAR (with many more resources and much greater flexibility). The Fujimori government also created Comites de Operaciones de Emergencia (COERs, Emergency Operations Committees) at the regional level to work under the CTARs-essentially duplicating the national civil defense system. Although transcended at times by considerable individual efforts at the local level, the dual structure guaranteed conflict, lack of communication, and miscommunication in administration generally and in ENSO management specifically. An internal report by a representative of a donor government wove many of the problems together:
Another difficulty is the competition and/or lack of coordination between local and regional governments in both the mitigation and emergency response phases. This is due to the nature and composition of these governments. Local governments (provincial and district municipalities) are elected and represent a cross-section of political parties. Officials of regional governments, also referred to as the Regional Transitory Administrative Councils (or as CTARs using the Spanish acronym), are appointed by President Fujimori. The CTARs have larger budgets, while still dependent on the Ministry of the Presidency for their funding. Local government budgets have very little flexibility, unless authorized by the national government in the case of emergency. While government representatives at both national and regional levels have complained that the municipal government is doing nothing to mitigate and/or respond to the disasters, mayors point out that if they make unauthorized expenditures they can be charged with misuse of funds. Compounding the situation is the fact that mayors are automatically the official heads of the local civil defense structure. Yet the [central] government has set up Emergency Operations Committees at regional levels that have basically usurped all functions away from the civil defense committees, without disbanding them. This has created two structures that are basically in conflict with each other. This has also led to more re-sources and emphasis placed on public prevention and mitigation works, in detriment to strengthening the organization and preparedness of the population to deal with expected emergencies.
In September 1997, the government dissolved CONAE. No substantive reason was given, but one close observer opined that it was because President Fujimori wanted to exercise even more personal control of ENSO preparations. Consistent with this perspective, rather than elevating INDECI, the Fujimori govern-ment moved ENSO management responsibilities to the office of the Presidente del Consejo de Ministros (PCM, the President of the Council of Ministers-a prime minister). The PCM was Alberto Pandolfi, a close confidante of President Fujimori. INDECI was again assigned only a staff function to the PCM.
Although Peruvian fishermen started seeing the early effects of ENSO in August, the first significant damage from the 1997-1998 ENSO in Peru came in the latter half of December 1997, and it soon became apparent that it was not to be a simple repeat of 1982-1983. Indeed, while many of the prevention works carried out so publicly in the previous six months helped mitigate some damage, it be-came clearer week by week that this ENSO was different. Flooding and landslides (huaicos) began to occur not only on the north coast but also inland and even south of Lima. It was a series of unpleasant surprises for the Fujimori government.
INDECI began reporting the accumulating damage from the 1997-1998 ENSO. As noted previously, however, in early January 1998 the office of PCM Pandolfi removed all information dissemination and donor contact responsibilities from INDECI, centralizing both functions in its own offices. No substantive explanation was offered, but the following combination of interrelated factors appeared to be at play: 1) ENSO damage was more severe and promised to be more widespread than anticipated, embarrassing the pre-impact (June-December 1997) activism of President Fujimori; 2) the office of the PCM was much more experienced in media relations and "spin control" than INDECI; and 3) the Fujimori government was concerned that foreign investment and the international financial community might become wary of Peru if the full extent of ENSO effects became known. Indeed, one informed source said that the government of Peru informally requested that the U.N. office in Lima not convene a general "donors' meeting" to avoid information exchange that it (the Peruvian government) could not control.
The degree to which the 1997-1998 ENSO became political is best illustrated by a subsequent change in the national government's institutional arrangement to manage ENSO effects. In early June 1998, PCM Pandolfi announced his resignation to return to "private life." Less than a month later, however, President Fujimori announced the formation of a Cómite de Reconstrucción Nacional (CEREN, the National Reconstruction Committee). With an announced budget of US$620 million (US$345 million of which was slated to come from external sources), CEREN was charged with re-viewing all ministry proposals for reconstruction; it was then to set priorities and make funding decisions. The director of CEREN was none other than . . . Alberto Pandolfi! His earlier resignation then suddenly made sense, as a close observer of Peruvian politics in a donor embassy described CEREN as "a parallel cabinet-but with a large pot of flexible funds."
In a July 1998 interview with donor country representatives, Pandolfi emphasized that CEREN defined reconstruction as exclusively "national public infrastructure" and that contracts would be let to the private sector for the vast majority of the projects. Pandolfi indicated that 36 months was the time frame for the completion of the projects, after which CEREN would cease to exist. Interestingly, that would take CEREN (and reconstruction from ENSO 1997-1998) right through the year 2000 presidential elections, a point not lost on the EIU:
[Fujimori's personal attention to disaster areas] has already served to revive his popularity-which flagged notably in 1997. The reconstruction phase will provide the president with ample opportunities to revert to his favoured role as champion of the poor, inaugurating bridges, roads and schools damaged by flooding and landslides. More important, this situation and the president's method of dealing with it are likely to last well into 1999 and may serve as a precursor to the April 2000 presidential and congressional elections. [EIU (Peru), 1998, Second Quarter, p. 3]
According to July 1998 figures, the government of Peru actually had access to more external financing than the announced US$345 million. The following amounts were then available or in the final stage of negotiation: $150 million from the World Bank; $150 million from the IDB; $100 million from the Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund of Japan; $50 million from the EXIM Bank of Japan; $20 million from CAF; $10 million from the U.S. government-for a total of US$480 million. It is necessary, however, to subtract US$55 million from the World Bank and IDB total because that funding was specified as reimbursement for "prevention" expenditures by the Peruvian government in the June-December 1997 period.
At donor insistence, all CEREN reconstruction projects had to explicitly take into account future risk and therefore include hazard mitigation components. INDECI, however, had little or no input into CEREN decision making, so Peruvian Civil Defense was effectively out of the reconstruction-and therefore the mitigation-policy loop.
The government of Bolivia institutional response to ENSO 1997-1998 followed the general pattern seen in Ecuador and Peru with, of course, locally specific differences. Media attention was again notable, although less in absolute terms than in either Ecuador or Peru, as Table 3 and Figure 3 show (the story count was totaled from three major dailies: La Razón, El Diario, Presencia).
| Number of ENSO-Related Stories: June 1, 1997, to July 31, 1998 |
|
| Month | Number of Stories |
| June 1997 | 2 |
| July 1997 | 3 |
| August 1997 | 69 |
| September 1997 | 176 |
| October 1997 | 89 |
| November 1997 | 72 |
| December 1997 | 189 |
| January 1998 | 164 |
| February 1998 | 187 |
| March 1998 | 103 |
| April 1998 | 81 |
| May 1998 | 40 |
| June 1998 | 22 |
| July 1998 | 13 |
| TOTAL | 1210 |
From 1983 to 1996, the DNDC had its own budget and was effectively autonomous. In 1996, however, the DNDC was assigned to the Secretariat of the Ministry of Defense, which curtailed its decision-making autonomy. Then, when the SNDC was created in 1997, the DNDC and the entire civil defense system were made directly responsible to the minister of defense, which totally eliminated any vestiges of civil defense autonomy. All expenditures and deployments had to be approved personally by the minister of defense. At the central government level, the law creating the SNDC also created a multi-sector Council of Ministers headed by the minister of defense. On paper at least, this structure might assure some coordination among the various ministries.
The problem was that the government under President Hugo Banzer, however, was (and remains) a coalition government of several, only loosely compatible parties, and the ministries were divided up among the coalition. The Ministry of Agriculture, for example, went to the populist CONDEPA (Conciencia de Patria) party, a minor member of the coalition. The Ministry of Defense went to the principal party in the coalition, the ADN (Acción Democràtica Nacionalista). Complicating the situation even further was the fact that the ADN has several competing internal factions, each headed by a person with presidential aspirations for the next election. The effect was that few ministers have any incentive to cooperate and therefore possibly make someone else "look good." Although written later, an EIU report captured this endemic problem of coalition governments:
Much-publicised infighting among members of the four-party ruling coalition since it took power in August last year [1997] has tarnished the government's image. A persistent problem for the government as it attempts to forge unity has been ingrained expectations that political support will be rewarded by allocation of public posts. Disagreement over the allocation of posts has compounded tensions within the coalition. [EIU (Bolivia), 1998, Third Quarter, p. 6]
To return to our unit of analysis, civil defense, the government of Bolivia decreed a state of national emergency in September 1997. Faced with the complexities of the 1997-1998 ENSO, the government then made another major institutional change that pushed the DNDC even further down the chain and demoralized it. The government created the (supposedly temporary) Unidad Técnica Operativa de Apoyo y Fortalecimiento (UTOAF, Technical and Operational Support Unit). UTOAF reported directly to the minister of defense and was effectively inserted as a layer between the minister and the civil defense structure. Its stated purpose was to negotiate with the international donor community, especially the World Bank (the lead donor with US$25 million committed), and to channel funding and resources to the various sub-national jurisdictions (regiones, regions) affected by the 1997-1998 ENSO. The problem was that the relationship between UTOAF and civil defense, especially the DNDC, was never clarified. A donor country field report of March 1998 noted that
the conflict between the Director of Civil Defense and UTOAF is both frank and open. The Minister of Defense has maintained the situation unchanged this past year. The conflict reflects the present lack of coordination in responding to ENSO and discredits both organizations.
The government's institutional response problem was seen as so severe that the international donor community in La Paz met in April 1998 to review the situation and chart a course of action. The result was a very detailed letter, on behalf of the entire donor community, from the in-country U.N. representative of the FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization) to Minister of Defense Fernando Kieffer. For our purposes here, the main points were as follows:
The minister of defense did not respond officially to the donor community's letter. In the end, however, the DNDC was demoralized by its ENSO experiences and widely seen as politically impotent and unable to protect itself bureaucratically, which it obviously had been.
THREE COUNTRIES and the DISASTER
MARGINALIZATION of CIVIL DEFENSE: Why?
While the details differed, civil defense in each of the three Andean countries was marginalized in the response to the 1997-1998 ENSO. Through more than two dozen field interviews, several reasons were adduced for the sidelining of the three civil defense organizations and the creation of temporary alternative structures. Interestingly, the reasons were largely common across the three countries.
The first argument was that the civil defense organizations "lacked capability" in the sense that they were understaffed, low-budget, and low-profile. That argument begs the question, however, because it was certainly possible to rapidly expand and strengthen civil defense, rather than create new organizations (e.g., COPEFEN in Ecuador, CONAE in Peru, and UTOAF in Bolivia) that had to start from scratch.
The second argument was that the "civil defense mentality is response, not mitigation." Furthermore, civil defense officials are seen as technicians (técnicos) "not long-term thinkers." This is a more cogent argument. With some exceptions, the civil defense officials in the three countries do seem totally operation- and response-oriented. In fact, several have expressed concern about becoming more pro-active in multi-sectoral mitigation, which they see as involving policy and development issues "above our level" or "outside our area."
The third argument was quite interesting. Probing into how the various presidents (via lower-level officials and observers) felt about civil defense as the 1997-1998 ENSO deepened and why they would opt for the creation of duplicative organizations, we found a commonality: the director position in all three civil defense organizations was held by an individual "not personally known" to the president-in all cases an active or retired military officer with little in the way of political connections. In point of fact, civil defense directorates throughout the region tend to be minor patronage positions where the person appointed to the position is, at best, "a friend of a friend of the president" and sometimes not even that. As the 1997-1998 ENSO increasingly became a national crisis, however, each president wanted someone he knew and trusted (to quote one official, "un amigo, una persona de confianza") in charge.
The fourth argument is somewhat a derivative of the others: civil defense was incapable of securing the cooperation of the many ministries and offices that had to be involved in something as complex as a major ENSO (to quote one official, "no tenían poder convocatorio" [they lacked power to convene real meetings]). This argument could hardly be disputed, but it is a vicious circle, for unless its profile and resources are increased, civil defense will never be seen as powerful enough to concern/coordinate other offices, much less ministries.
The fifth and last argument is especially contextual, and it has to do with the very limited time horizons or "vision" of political leaders. As one political observer noted (and he was echoed by others in all three countries): "Everything in these countries is based on short-term calculations of immediate advantage" (cortoplacismo), a problem that is exacerbated by the lack of a permanent civil service that could provide greater organizational stability and learning. In such situations, so the reasoning goes, temporary organizations (e.g., COPEFEN, CONAE, UTOAF) "solve," at least symbolically, the crisis of the moment. Making long-term governmental-institutional changes, however, is more costly (involving permanent budget increases), more difficult (both legally and politically), and would more than likely help a future government, and who cared about that?
The conundrum, of course, is that all three Andean countries face a multiplicity of natural and technological hazards and a recurrent ENSO problem, but their permanent disaster management structure, civil defense, is low-profile and weak. Therefore, when they face a disaster or catastrophe, they create temporary institutional structures to deal with the problems for a year or two, after which they revert back to the prior, and frankly inadequate, structure.
CONCLUSION: READY for the NEXT ENSO?
We opened this report with a question: With two major ENSOs in the last 17 years, will the governments of Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia be institutionally better prepared to deal with the next major ENSO? Not surprisingly, the answer is both yes and no. The problem is that the negative response is by far the more important.
On the positive side, at the level of individual reconstruction and rehabilitation projects, at least those financed by the World Bank, the IDB, and CAF, it seems clear that the post-1982-1983 ENSO flat learning curve and "replication in situ" will be avoided. By donor loan stipulation, mitigation measures must be included in projects currently being designed and constructed. These externally financed projects, however, will be largely limited to infrastructure (e.g., roads, bridges, irrigation and water management systems). The inclusion of serious mitigation components in projects funded nationally or sub-nationally is much less clear or certain.
Also on the positive side, it seems clear that individual agencies and ministries are internalizing their lessons from the 1997-1998 ENSO and will be better able to cope with the next major one. The ministries of health in the three countries are good examples, as are the various scientific offices dealing with climate and rainfall. That is, intra-organizational learning from the 1997-1998 ENSO is most impressive and stands in sharp contrast to the relatively slight gains made after the 1982-1983 event. The problem remains at the inter-organizational level.
In terms of institutional readiness for the next major ENSO in the Andean countries, the most significant negative lies in the most important area: multi-sectoral coordination. It seems clear that no major permanent institutional change will occur in any of the three countries in the area of risk and hazard management at the national level. That is, the various offices of civil defense will remain each country's nominal "national emergency organization," although each was politically and bureaucratically depreciated in the 1997-1998 ENSO response. As a result, none shows any signs of being able to secure the kind of multi-ministerial, multi-sectoral coordination required for effective long-term mitigation and preparedness. Moreover, the precedent has been set for their future marginalization with the next major disaster, ENSO or other. Can anything be done to break this pattern?
To answer the question fully and fairly, we should recall an especially useful event typology. Building on previous studies of organizational response to extreme events, veteran disaster researcher Henry Quarantelli (1987) once stratified such events by their response requirements. In his schema, accidents are typically dealt with by established response organizations normally expected to be involved in an event (e.g., police, fire services, paramedics). Emergencies require the addition of latent organizational capabilities, for example the Red Cross, the National Guard, or civil defense. Disasters, however, involve not only the expected participation and activities of response and latent organizations, but also assistance from agencies and/or organizations that "extend" into the impact area, for example private construction companies or public utilities that become involved in non-standard activities. Catastrophes are so severe that they are marked by the emergence of entirely new organizations or even social movements.
While this typology does not transfer perfectly to Latin American contexts, the threshold logic does, and it helps clarify what happened to civil defense in the three countries during the 1997-1998 ENSO, what will likely happen in future events, but also what can be done to break the pattern. The key is a political firebreak between the first two and last two event levels.
There is a bit of a tautology here, but, to explain, because the political stakes involved in response to accidents and emergencies are usually low, civil defense will be activated in emergencies and will remain "in charge." If, how-ever, an event passes the emergency threshold and becomes a disaster, the political stakes increase significantly, and the government cannot let the event response remain in the hands of an organization with little political profile or experience. That logic be-comes even more pronounced if the event proves a true catastrophe, with all the attendant political repercussions (especially the possible development of autonomous citizen groups or social movement organizations).
Interestingly, the threshold logic makes clear why the 1997-1998 ENSO achieved catastrophe status in the three Andean countries. As the effects deepened in late 1997 and early 1998, the ENSO passed from being a series of relatively localized emergencies (therefore involving civil defense) to a disaster requiring attention from national-level authorities (in all cases eventually the presidency), who then created the new response organizations detailed above-qualifying the 1997-1998 ENSO as a catastrophe.
So what does the analysis to this point and the adaptation of Quarantelli's threshold logic mean for the future of civil defense organizations in the three Andean nations? One option recognizes that civil defense organizations in the three countries are still the only permanent emergency response organizations, and attempts must be made to strengthen them, accepting the fact that in a disaster or catastrophe, civil defense will likely again be sidelined. The idea, however, is to improve civil defense capabilities so that fewer events pass the firebreak. That is, because event levels, and therefore the firebreak, are determined by response requirements versus response capabilities, if civil defense in the Andean nations can improve their capabilities, fewer emergencies will become either disasters or, worse, catastrophes.
The second option starts out like the first-strengthen civil defense-but adds an entirely new vision that requires a fundamental shift in the self-image of Andean nation civil defense officials. Under this scenario, civil defense leaders would seek to improve capabilities but also have come to understand and accept that a disaster or a catastrophe becomes rapidly political. However, they explicitly anticipate and plan proactively for that change in order to be central to new structures or organizations that emerge (and thereby avoid being marginalized). Under this option, as an event approaches the emergency-disaster firebreak, it is civil defense itself that articulates something like the following: "Mr. President, the situation is beyond our capabilities and requires a national-level response and attention from the highest levels of several ministries. We have anticipated this contingency, and here is a plan to organize the required response. We have also drafted most of the necessary decrees and procedures and stand ready to become the core, the infrastructure, of this higher-level organization." This option, of course, hardly guarantees success, but it does make civil defense at least a pro-active player rather than a passive victim as an event passes the political firebreak. For lack of a better term, this could be called the "accordion" option, as civil defense actually plans for a rapid and inclusive expansion to help the entire government cope with a disaster or catastrophe.
POSTSCRIPT: DECEMBER 1999
The year 1998 turned into 1999 and Ecuador was still plagued by political and economic problems, including lingering ENSO effects. According to the quarterly EIU country reports for 1999, Ecuador's economy continued its mid-1998 contraction well into the following year. The first quarter of 1999 saw a year-on-year contraction (negative growth) of -3.2% in GDP, followed by a second quarter contraction of another -5.7%. Petroleum was one of the few bright spots, and, led by cocoa, agriculture recovered somewhat from ENSO impacts (up 5.7% year-on-year), but banana and coffee production were off significantly. Because of ENSO flooding of plantations and the increased humidity, banana production in 1999 was down 13% even compared to 1998, and coffee production was off 42% compared to 1998, which was itself (with ENSO impacts deepening) not exactly a banner year for either crop.
The larger economic problem, how-ever, was a national budget and banking/ financial services crisis totally unrelated to ENSO. The 1999 national budget was severely flawed by overestimated revenues, and the problem was compounded by the progressive collapse of Ecuador's antiquated banking system. Indeed, by the end of the second quarter of 1999, more than one-third of the banks in Ecuador had either been liquidated or taken over by the government. As the EIU summed up the situation in its fourth quarter 1999 report (p. 18):
During the second quarter, the stimulus to oil production and exports of the sharp recovery in oil prices since April could not offset the lingering effects of the damage caused by El Niño and the general economic deterioration caused by the banking crisis.
At least as antiquated as Ecuador's banking system is its political system, especially Congress, which remained mired in personalism and patronage reminiscent of the 1950s. President Jamil Mahuad, who was inaugurated in August 1998, committed to IMF-style economic stabilization, modernization, and privatization (an IMF agreement is crucial to avoiding a full-blown Ecuadorean balance of payments crisis and resulting economic collapse). The problem was a divided and obstructionist Congress that the president's party did not come close to controlling. The EIU was blunt in its fourth quarter 1999 Ecuador report (p. 6):
Ecuador's political environment will be the most serious threat to the country's prospects of economic recovery over the next few years. Political opportunism, congressional fragmentation, and a lack of realism among many political actors in the opposition-dominated Congress will make negotiations over key reforms tortuous.
Given this political environment and the array of immediate problems confronting Ecuador and the Mahuad government, it should come as no surprise that improving institutional readiness for the next major ENSO (or any disaster for that matter) has received little attention. While associated with the previous (Alarcón) government, both CORPECUADOR and COPEFEN continue to exist-but probably not for long. Headed by the vice president of the country, CORPECUADOR has focused almost exclusively on rebuilding infrastructure, principally the roads connecting the coast to the rest of Ecuador; it is supposed to disappear when that task is completed. COPEFEN also continues to exist as a kind of staff to the vice president to help coordinate with CORPECUADOR, but it is to disappear in the next few months.
For its part Ecuadorean Civil Defense was given a budget increase-but only for the ENSO. To be fair, the Mahuad government has been distracted by the serious budget and banking problems, and a long-term strengthening of civil defense was clearly not a priority. As a result, Ecuador will face its next ENSO with just about the same underfunded, understaffed, and undercoordinated structure that was overwhelmed by the most recent ENSO. At that time another new ad hoc structure will probably be put in place to temporarily "manage" the disaster, and Ecuadorean Civil Defense will again be subsumed or sidelined. That is, nothing in the Ecuador case casts doubt on the marginalization thesis.
As in Ecuador, public, media, and leadership attention to the 1997-1998 ENSO experience receded during 1999 in Peru, and as ENSO losses clarified with time, the damage, as well as the various reconstruction efforts, began to be interwoven with other issues and problems affecting Peru. Overarching everything, however, was the upcoming presidential election of April 2000 and the intentions of President Fujimori. Indeed, it continued to be no exaggeration to say that virtually every major political-economic decision in Peru revolved around electoral considerations.
At the macro level, the Peruvian economy began to show a lessening of ENSO effects in August 1998-led by agriculture, fisheries, and mining-but weakness elsewhere held GDP growth to less than 1% for 1998 as a whole. The weakness continued into the first quarter of 1999, but the situation then improved markedly:
Economic growth rebounded in the second quarter [of 1999], rising to 4.2% year on year after expanding by 1.1% in the first quarter of 1999 and contracting by 0.6% in the fourth quarter of 1998. The high growth rate in the second quarter owes much to a statistical correction after the deep contraction experienced in the second quarter of 1998, when GDP fell by 2.9% mainly as a result of the effects of El Niño on primary sectors of the economy. [EIU (Peru), 1999, Fourth Quarter, p. 21]
According to public opinion polls (which admittedly emphasize Lima, never one of the president's strong areas), President Fujimori was showing approval ratings of less than 40% in January 1999. Shuffling his cabinet twice, Fujimori announced a number of new programs and initiatives aimed at improving public support in anticipation of the April 2000 elections, two of which relate to the 1997-1998 ENSO.
One of the most tried and true ways to increase public support, at least in the short run, is to increase government spending, especially in the time preceding a national election, and this was clearly the intention of the Fujimori government. Interestingly, funding was to be in part derived from ENSO reconstruction monies, according to the EIU first quarter 1999 report (p. 7):
The recent cabinet changes appear to confirm the suspicions of many analysts, including the EIU, that fiscal policy will be relaxed in 1999-2000. Funds earmarked for El Niño reconstruction will help to finance this. Alberto Pandolfi, the new minister of transport, communication, and housing, and the president of the Comité de Reconstrucción El Niño [CEREN] . . . has pledged $230 million this year for infra-structural works, a figure which could rise to $400 million depending on availability of credit.
That is, and as was noted above, while CEREN was to focus on reconstruction from the 1997-1998 ENSO, it also had to be considered part of the overall Fujimori electoral strategy for the April 2000 elections. Indeed, the government of Peru is currently finishing construction of 3,000 new housing units in the city of Ica, heavily dam-aged by the 1997-1998 ENSO. Probably not a coincidence, they are to be made available just be-fore the April 2000 elections.
The second major initiative of interest was the surprise announcement in July 1999 that President Fujimori was committing to a "decentralization" plan for education and health budgets starting in January 2000. This plan would reduce control by the Ministry of the Presidency (MIPRE) and turn over major expenditure authority to municipalities. This signaled a philosophical reverse from the tightly centralized and hierarchical pattern that is the hallmark of the Fujimori government-and which had led to such problems with localities trying to respond to ENSO impacts. In the opinion of many, however, this was "shrewd politics" rather than a change of heart-and a policy easily reversed after the 2000 elections.
As in Ecuador, the issue of improving Peruvian institutional capacity to respond to the next ENSO or any other major disaster was very rapidly lost in the maneuvering for the upcoming elections. Again as in Ecuador, the government of Peru will likely face its next major disaster with its inadequate civil defense structure-and will again have to create an ad hoc, temporary organization to manage the response. The marginalization hypothesis holds.
To recall, Bolivian Civil Defense was brought under tight Ministry of Defense (and UTOAF) control (especially financial control) as ENSO impacts deepened. On the order of President Banzer, all international aid was to be channeled through that ministry and was therefore admnistered by Minister of Defense Kieffer. The same held true when the Aiquile area of Cochabamba department was hit by a series of ten earthquakes in mid-May 1998. The problem, however, then became a Bolivian version of the fox guarding the hen house.
Allegations began surfacing in early 1999 that ENSO and earthquake assistance funds were being diverted for other purposes, and Kieffer was dismissed from his position in a June 1999 cabinet shuffle. As the EIU noted in its third quarter 1999 Bolivia report (p. 10):
Mr. Kieffer is said to have spent these funds on equipping the armed forces in-stead of providing aid to the affected areas. Part of the investigation centres on his ministry's acquisition in May 1998 of a Beechcraft 1900 light aircraft, which cost some $3m. It appears that the aircraft was purchased using El Niño relief funds but proved incapable of landing on the improvised landing-strips in the isolated rural areas most affected by El Niño. More damaging, Mr. Kieffer, along with the Cochabamba prefectura (provincial government), has attracted adverse attention because of the apparent disappearance of . . . $336,000 disbursed by Japanese donors specifically for earthquake victims.
The defense ministry was not alone in being charged with corruption. Similar (but not disaster-related) problems had earlier become public in the judiciary and law enforcement branches of the government, and a mafia drug smuggling scandal would subsequently emerge as well. In the end, three cabinet ministers would be forced out.
On a more positive note, the CAF (Corporación Andina de Fomento) ultimately estimated Bolivia's 1997-1998 ENSO losses at $525 million, less than the $1.4 billion estimated for the 1982-1983 ENSO. Nonetheless, the 1997-1998 losses represented approximately 7% of the GDP. Infrastructure damage accounted for more than half the losses, and lost agricultural production accounted for most of the remainder, especially in potato, wheat, maize, cotton, and livestock.
A major problem was that the ENSO was followed by the May 1998 earthquakes and then by forest fires in August 1999 that destroyed more than four million acres of grassland important to the cattle industry. The EIU noted in its fourth quarter Bolivia 1999 report (p. 20) that the fires "underscored the continued vulnerability of Bolivia's productive sector to natural disasters." Reviewing the ENSO losses and then the fire losses, the EIU concluded that "despite efforts by the defence ministry to develop emergency services to deal with natural disasters, the country is inadequately prepared and the productive sector remains highly vulnerable."
The bright spot in all of this is a set of proposals trying to work their way through the Bolivian Congress. Draft legislation contemplates charging 1) the Ministry of Defense generally and the National System of Civil Defense specifically with responding to events, and 2) the Ministry of Sustainable Development with hazard reduction (i.e., mitigation). The UTOAF would become permanent under this proposal but be converted solely to a fund for disaster reduction.
This legislative package is currently entitled, La Ley de Atención para la Reducción de Riesgos y Atención de Desastres (Law for Hazard Reduction and Disaster Response). It has been approved by the relevant cabinet members and by the congressional committee that attempts to oversee the Ministry of Defense. Unless it is considered in the extraordinary session of December 1999 (which is unlikely), the Bolivian Congress will take up this legislation in the January 2000 regular session. Although splitting mitigation (and possibly preparedness) from disaster response-and putting them in different ministries-poses serious problems in attacking the disaster problematic holistically, the Bolivian draft legislation would at least clarify roles and formally mandate someone with actual mitigation. That is, it would be at least a half-step forward in improving institutional readiness for the next ENSO or other major disaster. The law, however, is still a long way from passage and an even longer way from having budgeted funds behind it, the ultimate test of serious intent.
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