Senior policy adviser, Oxfam
The tsunami's impact was even worse because it hit some of the poorest parts of the affected countries. The solution now - along with an end to local conflicts - must be a reconstruction plan that does more than just rebuild poverty. It must create better access to safe water, health and education, reduce hunger, and lower child mortality rates.
Another lesson is that the initial reluctance to accept UN leadership of the humanitarian response proved a costly mistake. The US plan for a "core group" of governments for the emergency response lasted just eight days before it was quietly ditched. The UN, and especially Jan Egeland's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance, has at last been recognised as the best leadership option.
Third, we must look at the policies that are hurting the very countries we are trying to help. Just six days after the tsunami struck, the quota system that gave textile exports from Sri Lanka and the Maldives special access to Europe and the US ended. Sri Lanka could now lose 100,000 jobs. If there was ever a time for the EU and US to open their markets to exports from these countries, it is now.
World leaders need to double global aid as well as provide debt relief and reform unfair trade rules. This is the key to long-term recovery in tsunami-affected countries and the rest of the developing world.
Director, Research Foundation for Science,Technology and Natural Resource Policy
The first lesson is about development in coastal regions. Respect for the fragility and vulnerability of coastal ecosystems has been sacrificed for hotels and holiday resorts, shrimp farms and refineries. Mangroves and coral reefs have been relentlessly destroyed, taking away the protective barriers. Our study of the Orissa cyclone in India in 1999, which killed 30,000 people, found that the destruction was much more severe where the mangroves had been cut down for shrimp farms and an oil refinery.
The people's movement against industrial shrimp farming led to a court order to shut down the farms within 500 metres of the coastline. But the shrimp industry tried to undo environmental protection laws by seeking exemption from the government. We calculate that every acre of shrimp farming has an ecological footprint of 100 acres in terms of destruction of mangroves and the surrounding land, along with sea pollution. Every dollar generated by shrimp exports leaves behind $10 of ecological and economic destruction.
Conversely, the indigenous tribes of Andaman and Nicobar - the Onges, Jarawas, Sentinelese and Shompen - who engage in traditional fishing methods, had the lowest casualties, even though they were closest on the Indian sub-continent to the epicentre of the earthquake.
The government of Kerala state, observing that the tsunami left less destruction in regions protected by mangroves than barren and exposed beaches, has started a project for insulating coasts with mangroves.
Second, the tsunami shows us how severe the costs of continuing business as usual can be. The tsunami should wake up people like [Bjorn] Lomberg [an environmentalist who has questioned global warming]. They should ask the people of the Maldives whether they accept the inevitability of irreversible sea-level rise due to climate change induced by the burning of fossil fuels. I felt nature was telling us: "This is what sea-level rise will look like, this is how entire societies will be robbed of their ecological space to live in peace on the planet."
The third lesson is that environmental vulnerability must be reduced, not increased, and the true costs of damaging development taken into account.
Senior researcher, the Overseas Development Institute
There is now a consensus on the need for a tsunami early warning system in the Indian Ocean, but that draws too narrow a lesson from the disaster. Warnings should cover extreme weather too. Are the 2004 hurricanes, and the mild El Niño now affecting the eastern Pacific, part of a wider pattern of increasing climatic extremes driven by global climatic change? How can we hope to understand the effects of global warming if we do not understand the effects of extreme weather and inadequately monitor them?"
The poor must be helped to help themselves. Less than 4% of the damage is believed to have been insured, yet catastrophe insurance is one of the most effective ways of recovery. A major effort is needed to ensure that those providing microcredit to millions of poor people are able to include insurance in their loans, and have the funding in place and guarantees to withstand the effects of disasters. Arrangements are also needed for reinsuring risks and protecting micro-credit organisations.
Additionally, aid must not be tied. Almost $1bn of emergency aid has been confirmed, but we can be near certain that some of the initial decisions about relief will be wrong. Those on the ground and those supporting them require the flexibility to change what they are doing. This is why the money that voluntary agencies get directly from the public is very important. It is the most flexible form of relief.
Most of the aid provided by official donors comes with restrictions on what is to be provided, where it is to be sourced, and when and where it can be used. These restrictions are partly to ensure coherence and accountability, but are also motivated by domestic interests. Much of the relief is food aid, 90% of which comes from donor countries and 50% of that from the US. But US laws also protect American commercial interests.
Some European countries, including the UK and Sweden, have taken a lead in untying humanitarian food aid. The rest of Europe is slowly following suit.