In today's world, any corporate disaster stance that does not include protecting employees and rebuilding the local ecology, culture, and interwoven business relationships is naïve at best and unforgivable at worst. Our industry can no longer be dominated by point solutions or "duck and run" options. It's time to have an open dialogue about how companies, community leaders, and first responders can come together and leverage technology, processes, and people to serve areas impacted by disasters.

It's a question for all of us-NGOs and government agencies, first responders, and business continuity professionals. We must find a new balance between social responsibility and fiduciary duty. We must think about the communities we serve and how they've served us. We should be looking for holistic solutions that address the greater good, as well as our organizations' people, processes, and technologies, so that we can ultimately rebuild what we so often call "our commitment to community."

The Challenge

Being prepared for disasters from an ecological standpoint is crucial in community restructuring. Yet, potential environmental impacts are not adequately assessed in most plans and disaster relief plans rarely include the environment. It is only after the disaster that the harm to the environment and biodiversity is considered. From an ecological standpoint, that's too little, too late. Not convinced? Consider the response to several major disasters, which lacked a plan including environmental assessments and resulted in slow and painful healing of affected communities.

The Indian Ocean Tsunami

On December 26, 2004, off the coast of Indonesia, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake caused an enormous tsunami that hit Indonesia, India, Malaysia, the Maldives, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. An estimated 250,000 people died. The amount of rescue and aid was unprecedented, with countries and organizations from all over the world offering assistance and supplies.

While the response to people was immediate and admirable, damaged ecosystems were largely ignored. Nearly five years later, environmental impacts are compounding. Toxic debris, improperly disposed of at the time of clean-up, is leading to secondary impacts to the environment-sewage leaking into fresh water systems, soil and water contamination effecting agricultural land, and salt water flooding causing the salinization of local bodies of fresh water are a few examples. Oil leaks are numerous and may cause further contamination of nearby ecological communities in the future.

Hurricane Katrina

The most devastating hurricane to hit North America, 2005's Hurricane Katrina certainly resulted in the most long-term damage. However, it was infrastructure failure-not the storm itself-that caused levees to break and flood New Orleans. It was estimated that 80 percent of the city was underwater, and nearly 2000 people died. Much of the blame for the loss of life was placed on an inadequate evacuation plan, as many people without private transportation were unable to leave before the storm hit.

While human casualties were substantial, the loss to the area's delicate ecosystem was also extensive. The storm surge created erosion impacting critical coastal ecosystems. An estimated 217 square miles of land is still under water. This land acts as a crucial breeding ground and resting area for migrating birds. The damage to the wetland ecosystem was so substantial that 16 wildlife refuges were closed.

Water-borne contaminants in and around New Orleans resulted in devastation of the aquatic ecosystems, triggering a massive die-off of fish. The local fishing economy was completely destroyed as noted when U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez formally announced the fishery failure was due to hurricane Katrina. Years later, the environmental effects are still being felt and many of these ecosystems are still not restored.

September 11, 2001

When four commercial passenger airliners were hijacked by terrorist group al-Qaeda, some 3,000 people perished in the ensuing attacks. It was one of the worst disasters in U.S. history. However, in a matter of minutes, rescue efforts were set in motion. Many of the individuals in the Twin Towers and the Pentagon were rescued and evacuated. Those trapped in the rubble were searched for tirelessly, with recovery efforts extending a full eight months after the attacks.

While it was recognized that the debris from the attacks contained contaminants and toxins, some of them potentially life-threatening, it took months or even years before exposed individuals were assessed for health problems. Men, women, children, and even pets have recorded health problems from toxic exposure. There are even cases of women pregnant at the time of the attacks reporting fetal health problems.

When toxins such as asbestos and PCBs were released into the atmosphere, they settled, making their way into the soil, plants, water, and eventually people. These toxins have been known to cause biomagnification-an increase in concentrations in organisms at higher levels in the food chain-resulting in an organism having higher concentrations of a substance than is present in the organism's food. With levels increasing as they move up the food chain, the level of toxicity becomes increasingly dangerous. Asbestos and PCB have been known to cause birth defects, learning disabilities in children, severe health problems, and miscarriages.

In the post-911 era there has been no clear, definitive study on the environmental impacts from an ecological standpoint. The amount of airborne toxins was assessed by the EPA, but the toxins that later settled on soil and in the water were not adequately evaluated. This is a factor that needs to be considered when clean up measures are assessed.

Environmental Response

In all of these events, local officials responded with the best of intentions. However, when problems arise affecting the environment, clean up efforts can be so complex that it could take hundreds of years for ecosystems return to normal. Therefore, a response plan that takes into account the short- and long-term effects to the environmental ecosystems is an essential element of any community emergency plan.

Humanitarian efforts will always be priority one, but the environment must run a close second. Environmental degradation will result in even more danger to the people who live and work in the community. As we have seen, toxic contaminants often end up in the local environment, contaminating water and soil. Clean drinking water, sanitation, forest, agricultural, and ecosystems are the building blocks with which communities can re-build themselves. When they are disturbed, the ecological infrastructure can fail, and community restructuring will grind to a halt.

Proper legislation related to disaster management, including awareness-raising at local, state, and national levels, must include a requirement for plans to assess factors that affect the environment. These plans would include environmental assessment, environmental management, coastal zone planning, and eco-friendly clean up and disposal.

A bottom-up approach to strategic planning is also important, as this will ensure a proper assessment of the ecological make-up that surrounds the affected communities. This is beneficial in preparing early warning systems and preventing longer-than-needed recovery times. Additionally, land-use planning can reduce risk and implement approaches that are conducive to flood management, observation of fresh water sources, fauna and flora protection, and proper supervision of delicate ecosystems.

Climate change is another factor to consider. Environmental disaster strategies must include plans for dealing with a change in climate due to the global climate changes. This effort requires collaboration with meteorologists, climatologists, oceanographers, geologists, and engineers.

Structures and Systems

The need for regular monitoring and assessment of the community and biodiversity is a necessity. Community-based programs that include environmental factors should include environmental risk assessments (ERA) and environmental management systems (EMS). Rapid Environmental Assessment (REA) and Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) are also tools that can be used for disaster relief and community development in community rebuilding.

Most importantly, strategic environmental assessments (SEAs) should be built into local disaster plans. This type of assessment is the systematic process of analyzing the environmental effects of policies, plans, and programs. It is seen as a stepping stone to sustainability. SEA considerations include social and economic effects, which require that decision making be approached in the earliest stages of planning.
The SEA grew from the environmental impact statement (EIS), which helped to usher in the U.S. National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The steps in the SEA process include scoping environmental objectives, evaluating environmental indicators, defining and gathering required baseline environmental and socioeconomic information, assessing potential impacts, and considering alternatives.

In 1948, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) was founded as the world's first global environmental organization. Since then it has become the leading authority on sustainable development and environment. IUCN has implemented numerous laws and policies to develop ways to monitor conservation efforts in communities around the world. They not only focus on people, but the biodiversity that exists within and around the communities. Through IUCN, there have been many initiatives to prevent disasters and to assess damages done by natural disaster, human, and global changes.

In the End

Educating and awareness-raising of the connection between disaster recovery efforts and restructuring planning is crucial for both affected communities and decision-makers. In the future, the effects to coastal and inland environments and communities should be assessed more critically when planning policies to manage and cope with disasters. Taking these factors into consideration in the planning stages will help you "do the right thing" when disaster strikes-stay put and recover your organization as well as the surrounding environment.