It’s no overstatement to say that all eyes have been on Haiti since the nation was rocked by a shallow, 7.0 magnitude earthquake on January 12. The nature of those gazes, however, has varied distinctly.

In the beginning, there were the furtive, train-wreck glances of social media and the frustratingly slow, only slightly more in-depth views from breaking news reports. Now, even while the delivery of aid is spotty, some look ahead to the coming days of immediate recovery and others look to past events that exacerbated the losses in what was already a devastating disaster.

And more than likely, the world will soon look away.

It wouldn’t, after all, be the first time. Haiti has been battered by disaster—natural, political, social, and economic—for centuries. In the last decade, especially, we’ve had good reason to focus on the beleaguered nation, but somehow couldn’t maintain eye contact, as former Clinton politico David Rothkopf pointed out in a post on the National Public Radio website Wednesday.

“We have watched repeatedly as hurricanes have battered Haiti and left it staggered because just a few hundred miles away from the richest country on earth was one so deprived that it was ill-equipped even for the predictable weather that came with so many autumns,” he wrote. “We knew all this and yet with every failure to act or to follow through on a good intention, we assured yesterday's outcomes.”

More good intentions will undoubtedly rise from the rubble of the Haitian quake; the question is how can they be manifested into a resilient nation once the media spotlight winks out.

“We are all very aware of the ‘CNN effect’ in disasters,” said Natural Hazards Center Director Kathleen Tierney. “While the cameras are there to highlight the plight of disaster victims, the whole world is watching.

“But what happens when the media leave and the drama of lives being saved transitions into the gritty business of providing for the daily survival needs of hundreds of thousands of victims? Aid workers and agencies converge to provide assistance to disaster-stricken communities, but what happens when they leave and move on to the next disaster? What will it take to meet the challenges of recovery in a devastated nation?”

While much of the discussion is shortsighted, some have begun to speculate on those questions—and perhaps even provide a glimmer of the answers.

“First we must care for the injured, take care of the dead, and sustain those who are homeless, jobless and hungry,” Bill Clinton, former president and the United Nation’s special envoy for Haiti, wrote in the Washington Post last week. “As we clear the rubble, we will create better tomorrows by building Haiti back better: with stronger buildings, better schools and health care; with more manufacturing and less deforestation; with more sustainable agriculture and clean energy.”

But promises to build back better aren’t enough, writes GeoHazards International Founder Brian Tucker in a Guardian editorial. Locals need to be trained to construct buildings that are resistant to disaster, they need to be educated on disaster preparedness, and laws and infrastructure must be put in place to assure disaster mitigation.

“I would call for agencies soliciting funds for the response to and recovery from the Haitian earthquake to commit 10 percent of the amount that they collect to mitigating future earthquakes…” he writes. “Why 10 percent? Because the rule of thumb is that each dollar invested in preventing natural disasters saves 10 dollars in future damage.”

While those overarching efforts are certainly necessary, others see a bottom-up approach as potentially more valuable when brick meets mortar. A recent New York Times article highlighted the need for smaller, localized efforts to get the most staying power out of paradigm shifts.

“You can’t just sweep in from outside and drop something in and say, ‘This is exactly what you need,’ ” Laura Sampath, manager of the International Development Initiative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is quoted as saying. “It has to be almost driven from the community.”

Whatever the outlook for Haiti in the months and years ahead, the most important challenge for pragmatists and visionaries alike will be not to look away from the destruction. Haiti, so often overlooked, will deserve more than a second glance and the type of scrutiny that’s been denied to it thus far.

“Good intentions and a pregnant moment were overtaken by events ... and in a way, that's when [the] tragedy began,” Rothkopf wrote. “With every dollar withheld, with every program withdrawn, with every aid worker shifted to a different front in a more politically pressing development initiative, somebody's death was foretold.”