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Restoring Our Misfortunes: Natural Disasters, Human-made Disasters, and Wars

Let’s not leave Lisbon just yet: the city also has a great disaster restoration story to tell. In fact, I’d like to nominate one of Lisbon’s most beloved historical figures as “The Patron Saint of Restoring the Built Environment”: the Marquês de Pombal.

Poet Luis de Camões called Lisbon “the princess of the world… before whom even the ocean bows.” It was built on the trading empire created by arguably the three greatest ocean explorers in recorded history, Ferdinand Magellan, Vasco de Gama, and Prince Henry the Navigator. All were Portuguese (although Magellan was snubbed by the Portuguese king, and ended up sailing mostly under the Spanish flag).

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WHY ISN’T COLUMBUS ON THAT LIST OF “THE THREE GREATEST NAVIGATORS”?

Columbus wasn’t on the list because he only sailed west to India out of ignorance: the Portuguese, who kept their maps a closely guarded state secret, knew that the eastern route was far shorter. It was only the dumb luck of bumping into the Americas (combined with his courage and management skills, which prevented mutiny) that saved Columbus from disaster. Chinese explorer Zheng He might deserve inclusion, but his accomplishments aren’t well documented.

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A HORRIFYING HALLOWEEN

In 1755, Lisbon was the most prosperous city in Europe. But on All Saints’ Eve of that year, as the majority of citizens celebrated High Mass in their many magnificent cathedrals, three major earthquakes struck in quick succession, followed by a 45-foot tsunami. Thirteen thousand people died in Lisbon (60,000 overall) and much of the city lay in ruins.

As chief minister of Portugal, Pombal heroically rose to the occasion. He organized a massive relief effort for the survivors, had the dead quickly buried to prevent disease, and immediately laid plans for the city’s restoration. But others had their own vision of how Lisbon should rebuild, and many of those plans were of the tabula rasa variety: tear everything down and create the city anew. It was our hero, the Marquês de Pombal, who was the voice of reason.

He envisioned a grand, revolutionarily new style of city plan, but he argued strenuously and successfully for retaining many of the city’s surviving heritage buildings. Fortunately, he had the political authority to pull it off (not in a democratic process, thankfully, as few of his peers thought old buildings were worth saving).

One of Pombal’s design goals was to create a feeling of openness and calm. He designed Lisbon’s first public garden, called Passeio Público (Public Walk) and all of Lisbon’s high society liked to stroll in its shade and romantic ambience. In the late nineteenth century, the Passeio Público became the key to Lisbon’s northward expansion when it was converted to the wonderfully wide, pedestrian-friendly Avenida da Liberdade. (Previously, Lisbon had only grown “sideways,” along the banks of the Tagus River, a shape that became rather dysfunctional.) The Avenida retains that value as a path to balanced growth today. In fact, most of Pombal’s plan 205still works wonderfully, and the buildings he saved and restored almost three centuries ago are a visual feast.

Lisbon is uniquely positioned for Restoration Economy leadership. It retains, of course, the strategic location that once helped make it Europe’s greatest city. Building on that natural asset, Lisbon today boasts a large amount of restorative development. What’s more, “restoration” is constantly on its citizens’ lips. The largest of Lisbon’s many city squares is the Plaza of the Restorationists (Praça dos Restauradores) (honoring a political, not physical restoration), which has restaurants, hotels, bus stops, and metro stops, all with Restauradores in their name. A huge adjacent plaza, Praça Dom Pedro IV (known familiarly as “Rossio”), is composed entirely of restored buildings.

The Marquês de Pombal has his own plaza and statue, of course, and owning a restored preearthquake house in Lisbon bears a significant cachet of distinction. Thus, Lisbon is a city with a very deep and conscious connection to restoration. This could serve it well as the Restoration Economy continues to assert its growing dominance.

All this is not to say that Lisbon’s love of restoration rendered it immune to fads. Lisbon went through an “urban renewal” frenzy like the one that afflicted the United States in the ‘60s and ‘70s, but Lisbon’s was a bit later, doing its widespread damage to the city’s heritage and appearance mostly from 1975 through 1995. It was at that point that a restoration-sensitive mayor, João Soares, took office.

During his tenure, Lisbon built Expo ‘98 on a brownfields site, which involved cleaning up heavy oil and industrial contamination. The property is now a pleasant residential area with a huge pavilion for public events. Many sensitively restored buildings now grace the old districts of Alfama and Chiado, and adaptive reuse of old buildings is rampant.

Under Soares, Lisbon put a lot of money into transportation infrastructure, expanding and rehabilitating roads, highways, and bridges. Lisbon now has excellent public transport: an efficient mix of buses, light rail, and charming old restored electric trolleys (the real thing, not the loud, foul-smelling diesel trucks with trolley bodies used by many American cities in an attempt to purchase an instant veneer of heritage).

Of course, Lisbon’s continued revival will require much more than adaptive reuse of old buildings, restoring heritage structures, and rehabilitating public transportation. The city’s water infrastructure is in need of reconstruction, and the highly polluted Tagus River is in desperate need of restoration, to name just two challenges.

Bear in mind, also, that I’m discussing Lisbon here, not Portugal. Although the country as a whole has recently invested significantly in refurbishing its transportation infrastructure, Portugal’s energy grid is a wasteful antique. Rather than using the opportunity to leapfrog, the country is pursuing an early twentieth-century style of energy development, such as damming the beautiful Guadiana River. This current project will flood priceless archaeological treasures and tourist sites (and entire towns) in an ill-conceived hydroelectric scheme.

Ecologically, the country is an utter disaster area, almost completely agricultural. Water-hungry, often illegal, nonnative eucalyptus plantations are replacing Portugal’s pitifully few remaining natural forests at a horrendous rate. Meanwhile, toothless government agencies stand by helplessly, in a country with significant drought problems.

Maybe Portugal will get a clue from the Balearic Islands of neighboring Spain, which get 10 million visitors annually. In May 2002, they started charging tourists a restoration tax to fund (1) the rehabilitation of areas damaged by tourism, (2) the demolition of decrepit hotels and restoration of the sites to a natural state, and (3) the restoration of monuments. (It’s demonstrative of how restoration hasn’t yet entered the public dialogue that they misnamed this an “ecotourist” tax.)

With its enlightened local leadership going against the national tide, though, Lisbon could become the model for the rest of Portugal, and maybe the world. Most models are small-scale, so making the entire capital a model for the country would be truly revolutionary. Then again, Portugal is a country that knows revolutions (once going through 16 governments in three years). I, for one, am rooting for the Marquês de Pombal’s city to become a Restoration Economy front-runner.

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AN EXAMPLE OF HOW THE RESTORATION ECONOMY IS CHANGING OUR WORLD

Imagine that the 9/11 disaster had occurred in 1970, when “urban renewal” was at a fever pitch. Rebuilding lower Manhattan would likely have meant demolishing almost anything old. Compare that with today’s reality, where the New York City Infrastructure Task Force has been formed. It’s a coalition of private-sector organizations, tasked with the job of developing a vision for rebuilding the damaged area (which includes 67 city landmarks). The Marquês de Pombal had to fight to save his historic buildings. This task force includes five heritage restoration associations: the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the World Monuments Fund, the Preservation League of New York State, the New York Landmarks Conservancy, and the Municipal Arts Society. That’s a lot of societal evolution in just three decades.

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THE SCOPE OF THE DISASTER/WAR RESTORATION INDUSTRY

Three categories of disasters comprise this restoration industry.

• War This category includes world wars, civil wars, police actions, terrorism, and drug wars. This includes recent new forms of “warfare,” such as the long-standing U.S. spraying of Colombia’s farms and ecosystems with Agent Orange-like herbicides. As 208of 2002, Columbia had increased coca production by 20 percent (similar to the results of our other misguided drug wars), while significantly decreasing both the health of the local farmers and the biodiversity of one of the richest ecological treasures on the planet. The restorative follow-ups to modern wars are far more extensive and multifaceted than ever before.
• Human-made (anthropogenic) disasters This category includes both nonnatural anthropogenic disasters, such as oil spills, industrial explosions, nuclear power accidents, etc., and anthropogenic natural disasters. The latter subcategory includes mud slides and floods due to deforestation, river straightening, dikes, levees, and dams. It also includes many forest fires, as well as climate change, global-related storms and droughts.
• Natural disasters This category includes natural flooding (usually not a problem if people don’t build or farm in floodplains), natural forest fires, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, and non-climate change-induced (not presently distinguishable from anthropogenic) hurricanes, tornadoes, etc.

PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

Restoring a city or country from civil war, invasion, earthquake, or flood usually involves both the built and natural environments. It also involves creating entirely new built structures when the old ones are obliterated or beyond repair. Thus, this restoration industry often involves the same techniques and players as new development, because it doesn’t matter to the designer or constructor what caused a piece of property to be made available.

Integrated restoration is the future, but it’s not entirely a new concept. We’ve seen that Lisbon discovered, centuries ago, that heritage restoration and disaster restoration must be integrated for a city’s rebuilding to be maximally successful in the long run. As in nature, disasters can have the healthful effect of stimulating new growth, and of removing unwanted but hard-to-get-rid-of features. Some of our most treasured buildings and neighborhoods arose after disasters cleared space for them.

The more we treasure a structure, the more restoration will become a normal part of its life cycle. Almost a century after San Francisco’s destruction, many of the best buildings that were part of its restoration are themselves being restored. For example, the architecturally gorgeous 209Mark Hopkins Hotel, long a favorite of royalty and celebrities, commands a magnificent view of San Francisco and the bay from atop Nob Hill. It was built in 1926 on the site of a 40-room mansion (owned by the widow of Mark Hopkins, cofounder of the Pacific Railroad), which was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire. A three-year, $12 million restoration was completed in 1982; a major renovation took place in 1988; the hotel’s famous Peacock Court was restored in 1995; its legendary “Top of the Mark” sky lounge was restored in 1996 for $1.5 million; and in 2000, the Mark completed yet another multimillion-dollar renovation. “Essentially, we have a new hotel within our historic walls,” said general manager Sandor J. Stangl at the reopening. (In 1998, the Mark became the first luxury hotel in San Francisco to offer an electric car recharging station—yet another reason it’s my favorite accommodation in that lovely city.)

New development-oriented firms entering the disaster restoration industry, despite the construction process similarities mentioned above, will find themselves working in a very different milieu with many unique rules, expectations, rhythms, players, and processes. For instance, funds often come from disaster relief agencies and wealthy donors, rather than from investors. What’s more, hurricanes and earthquakes (not to mention wars) often spill large quantities of fuels, chemicals, and raw sewage, so working conditions are often abnormal—even dangerous—and a variety of urgent restoration priorities might be executed simultaneously.

In the case of damaged (rather than destroyed) buildings, or of destroyed buildings containing valuable artifacts (such as museums), such firms need to work with restorationists from a wide variety of disciplines. As with everyone else in times of disaster, restorationists and new developers must work hand in hand for the public good.

Depending on the extent of the disaster, the term “restoration” might apply more to the larger process—restoring the damaged entity (city, nation, etc.),—than to many of its components, which would be rebuilt from scratch. But replacement, whether due to old age or disaster, is still a legitimate form of restoration, even when all the materials are new. This is because replacement adds value without consuming more space (that is, the structure itself is new but is regarded as restorative development because it reuses and restores value to the same property, rather than contributing to sprawl).

Unlike new development, replacement must integrate desired new functionality with the preexisting needs that were served before the tragedy. There are, of course, significant differences between rebuilding a 210community after a disaster or war, and creating or expanding a community in normal times. Here are just four of them:

1. Disaster/war reconstruction timetables are far more urgent, and the psychological environment is very different If the destruction of an older community is extensive, and the leaders use its “rebirth” as an opportunity to give the city a new plan, they will have very little time to think it through. If the precipitating event was a natural disaster, leaders might even want to rethink the community’s location or orientation before rebuilding (as Valdez, Alaska, did after its 1964 earthquake). They also might need time to research new technologies, such as seismic building and infrastructure designs.

2. Disasters bring out the best and the worst in people. Restorationists must often deal with political interference that’s different from the usual graft Unpopular politicians throughout history have capitalized on disaster recovery situations to advance private agendas while the citizenry is distracted, vulnerable, and desperate for leadership of any sort. They wrap venal schemes in recovery language (or the national flag), taking advantage of the unity that disasters inspire among voters.

They can make themselves into heroes while violating the victims, because the public’s desire to pull together stifles dissent, with criticism of leaders in times of emergency often perceived as inappropriate, even unpatriotic. Forming large, diverse, transparent coalitions to plan disaster and war restoration helps resist such machinations.

3. Rebuilding the community must compete with other urgent agendas for attention and funds Surviving citizens have been displaced and often require immediate access to food, clean water, shelter, and medical aid. In the case of war, it’s not just the natural and built environments that need to be restored. Anew government, new currency, and new constitution might be required, and a healing process begun.

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Such activities might include a new “bill of rights,” war crimes tribunals, restoring (or invalidating) prewar property titles, etc. This renewal sometimes even requires the destruction of certain forms of heritage, such as statues of disgraced political and military figures. Many activities comprise the postdisaster response—restoring law, order, peace, homes, infrastructure, trade, removing land mines and contamination, etc.—but many are not currently recognized as restoration.

4. Activities (and funding) in this restorative industry are far more automatic than in the other seven restorative industries Restoring heritage, fisheries, and other sectors often requires government, citizen, industry, or NGO activism to raise funds and stimulate public support, but this is seldom the case with wars and disasters. (Activism is sometimes needed to properly fund the rebuilding of poverty-stricken Southern Hemisphere nations, though.)

Because war and disaster reconstruction is the oldest, best-established, and most familiar of the eight restorative industries, this chapter differs from the other “industry chapters” in two ways: (1) There are fewer examples of restorative projects than in the other restoration industries. More time is spent defining the broad spectrum of disasters that produce the related industries, and (2) many of the projects that are featured come from the past, in order to give the book more historical context. This wasn’t possible with the more recently emerged restorative industries.

WAR RESTORATION

Lisbon was an extreme example of restoration following natural disaster, but Warsaw is an even more extreme example of postwar rebuilding.

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World War II

The damage to Warsaw’s built environment resulting from World War II was even more extensive than Lisbon’s, leaving precious few heritage structures to restore. With or without surviving cultural assets, though, Warsaw’s functions needed immediate restoration, as they had almost completely ceased.

The scope of the restoration crossed the entire spectrum of the built environment: housing, infrastructure, schools, industry, heritage, government, and contamination. In addition to being Poland’s capital, Warsaw had, for some three-and-a-half centuries, been the country’s economic, political, and cultural heart, so razing this city erased much of what the nation held precious.

And erase it the Nazis did, as a way of demoralizing resisters. They didn’t just eliminate physical assets and treasures, either: the human carnage was so extensive as to beg the label “extermination.” Nearly half the entire population was killed: 600,000 out of 1,300,000. In 1943, the Jewish ghetto was thoroughly “cleansed,” following a weeks-long resistance supported by the Polish resistance movement.

In 2002 dollars, over $14 billion worth of structures was destroyed. Libraries, museums, or colleges that survived the bombing were looted and burned. General Eisenhower surveyed the city on September 21, 1945. Having witnessed horrors all over Europe, he said: “Warsaw is far more tragic than anything I have seen.” The loss of life, livelihood, and assets made even Lisbon’s eighteenth-century earthquakes look minor.

The litany of destruction was amazing: 59 of the 82 churches and synagogues, 24 of the 31 libraries, 36 of the 47 professional schools, 146 of the 232 hospitals, 25 of the 33 museums, 335 of the 438 schools, and 20 of the 21 theatres. Of those buildings and institutions listed as surviving, not even one escaped undamaged.

Industry was completely paralyzed, so, armed with a meager supply of hand tools and virtually no powered tools or construction equipment, each private citizen started rebuilding, focusing first on infrastructure. The streets were cleared, the dead were buried, and by December 1945(!), city transit lines were moving five million passengers. Thus began one of the most heroic city restoration efforts of all time.

By the end of 1946, 12 million cubic feet of debris had been cleared and 86 million cubic feet of buildings had been repaired, but this amounted to only one percent of the structures damaged. Forty-two million cubic feet of those buildings left standing were damaged beyond 213

repair, constantly threatening to collapse on the laborers. Housing was worst hit, with only 15 percent of prewar dwellings remaining. Workers returned from their daily restoration labor to “homes” lacking windows, doors, heat, light, and water.

Exactly how does one go about restoring a completely devastated city in a hurry? In Warsaw’s case, the restoration’s “carefully worked out plan” (mentioned in the quote that opens this chapter’s “War Restoration” section) involved the confiscation of all land in the city by the municipal government. This gave planners the design freedom they needed to plot the rebuilding of some 779 million cubic feet of buildings, and it sped the process tremendously.

Former owners had the choice of receiving some compensation for their property from the city, or taking out a long-term lease at token cost. The terms of the lease required that they redevelop the land in accordance to the city’s master reconstruction plan. In Rebirth of a City (quoted earlier), here’s how one goal of the plan was worded: “[While we will] maintain the character of a thriving metropolis, gone will be the crowding and haphazard layout which had resulted from Warsaw’s rapid economic growth in the 19^th Century.”

One resource of immense value surfaced in a country village: an extensive collection of photos and architectural drawings of Warsaw’s historic structures. This allowed planners to accurately rebuild the city in a way that would retain some of its old personality. Integrating heritage into the reconstruction turned out to be a stroke of genius.

In contrast, many other cities devastated during WWII were rebuilt without thought to their culture. The result was a sterile collection of drab, utilitarian buildings and layouts, rather than vibrant, interesting communities. Rotterdam and Dresden are two examples. The latter had been known worldwide as the most beautiful city in Europe. That was prior to the massive British and U.S. firebombing of this undefended city—probably intended to demoralize the Germans—which contained no significant military targets and was packed with civilian refugees (over 50,000 civilians burned to death).

The recreation of Warsaw’s historic buildings wasn’t just done quickly: it was of such painstaking quality that Warsaw’s restorers found themselves in great demand throughout Europe as each country launched its own decades-long postwar restoration. These new restoration professions—which often became lifelong careers—were a Godsend for a country in desperate need of foreign currency (their own having been rendered nearly worthless). 214

More recently, Warsaw has undergone a restoration of a subtler sort. The collapse of the Soviet Union allowed Warsaw to restore its long-stifled entrepreneurial zeal for enterprise—and its place in the world economy—which had been stifled during the postwar decades of communist “supervision.” Those of us presently performing war and disaster restoration would do well to remember Warsaw’s story anytime we feel helpless or overwhelmed, or are overcome with self-pity.

The U.S. efforts after WWII to rebuild former enemies Germany and Japan might rank as the two most successful postwar economic restorations of all time. In fact, we focused far more on rebuilding our enemies than on rebuilding their victims: we revitalized Germany and Japan into two of our largest trading partners.

The Cold War

Let’s move forward a few years and touch briefly on the Cold War.

I accidentally discovered the German dimensions of post-Cold War restoration while researching one of Scotland’s most interesting examples of heritage restoration, the nineteenth-century experimental utopian/ industrial village of New Lanark. (Many of the twentieth-century’s more enlightened business practices were pioneered by its founder, Robert Owen.)

In the bar of a wonderful hotel occupying one of New Lanark’s restored old mills, I met Rudi Nasshan, a lovely German gentleman who had recently retired from teaching. Sipping Lagavulin that September of 2000, we discussed this book-in-progress.

Here’s an excerpt from an email he later sent me on December 25, 2000, in response to my request for German examples of Cold War-related restorative development:

Few bombs were dropped in anger during the Cold War, but there is a surprising amount of rebuilding and cleanup associated with it. Some of the worst—and most ignored—Cold War damage is underwater, where the U.S. Navy and the Atomic Energy Commission (now called the Department of Energy) dumped thousands of drums of toxic—often radioactive— waste. The Soviet Union did likewise. Many of these nuclear and chemical dump sites—according to David Helvarg, in his excellent 2001 book, Blue Frontier: Saving America’s Living Seas—are in areas that have now become marine sanctuaries. Worse, the dump sites weren’t recorded for the most part, so there’s no map to the danger areas in need of remediation.

Many of these containers are already leaking, and most will soon be, so maybe a new form of international underwater “Superfund” will need to emerge to remove them before they corrode and rupture. Or, if a method is found to accomplish this using free enterprise, maybe a “blue-fields” industry will emerge to join the land-based brownfields industry.

Modern Long-Lasting “Brown” Wars

As mentioned earlier, most war (and disaster) restoration is obvious and straightforward—rebuilding buildings and infrastructure—so let’s focus on two new wrinkles in war restoration.¹

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The World Bank recently completed a study of 52 conflicts that began since 1960, and discovered a disturbing recent trend: Starting around 1980, conflicts started lasting three times as long as the average conflict prior to the most recent two decades. Since wars usually metastasize with time, ever-larger numbers of countries are now likely to become involved, directly or indirectly, in present and future conflicts.

Modern wars have also become more persistent in another, even more damaging manner: their long-lasting toxicity. Wars have always left various forms of contamination in their wake, but the quantity, toxicity, and longevity of war-related contaminants have all mushroomed in recent decades. A century ago, the only lasting battle pollutant would usually have been lead. In the twentieth century, petrochemicals from motor pools, blown-up vehicles, and bombed fuel depots became the primary source of “brown” battlefields.

Now, we’re adding radioactive contamination to the mix, as U.S. armor-piercing bullets and artillery shells frequently use depleted uranium. Over 270 tons of depleted uranium were used by U.S. troops in the Balkans and in the Gulf War from 1991 to 2001. Most is still in the soils of these countries, but a fair portion of it is now found worldwide, spread by rivers, oceans, and windblown dust. This means that most wars using U.S. munitions will now add to the background radiation of every country and ocean, even without the deployment of tactical or strategic nuclear devices. The Royal Society (London) issued a report in 2002 documenting kidney failure in soldiers exposed to depleted uranium.

A United Nations report on the aftermath of the Kosovo conflict in Yugoslavia was issued in March 2002.² The Environmental News Network (www.enn.com) published a related March 28, 2002, Associated Press article by Naomi Koppel, which quoted the study’s team leader, Pekka Haavisto, as saying, “The team was surprised to find DU (depleted uranium) particles still in the air two years after the conflict’s end. Based on these findings, the authorities should carefully plan how DU-targeted sites are used in the future. Any soil disturbance at these sites could risk releasing DU particles into the air.”³

In an article by John Einan Sandvand in Oslo, Norway’s newspaper Aftenposten (January 13, 2001), Dr. Jinan Galeb, a pediatrician and oncologist at Basra Children’s Hospital, said, “Our statistics show the rate of malignant cancers among children in 1999 was 242 percent higher than 217

the level before the [Gulf] war.” Leukemia has skyrocketed in villages close to the battlefields, shepherds have reported far higher rates of birth defects in their lambs, and one small village reported that 40 percent of families have at least one member with cancer.

Dr. Melissa McDiarmid, professor of medicine at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, has been studying the effects of exposure to depleted uranium, and has personally cared for some of the 60 U.S. combatants who were victims of “friendly fire,” which exposed them to the toxic side effects of our own weapons. In an article by Steve Conner, “The Uranium Minefield,” in London’s The Independent, she said: “This is a surreal situation. We are being asked, ‘What are the health risks of something that’s supposed to blow you up?’ “⁴

The use of depleted uranium in munitions is an enormously profitable application of used nuclear power plant fuel. It’s also a very natural one, because most companies in the nuclear energy industry are also major military contractors. In a perversion of green business practices, the nuclear power industry has accomplished what every environmentally conscious manufacturer dreams of: selling its toxic waste for big bucks.

HUMAN-MADE (ANTHROPOGENIC) DISASTER RESTORATION

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Michael Grunwald went on to say (in the above-referenced article), “. . . that’s one reason the tub keeps overflowing: the sides of the tub have moved closer together. But there’s another problem: there’s more water pouring into the tub.… Over half the [Mississippi] basin’s wetlands have disappeared, including more than 80 percent in Iowa, Missouri and Illinois.… (Who’s responsible for protecting those precious wetlands? The Army Corps of Engineers.)… The federal government finally learned that lesson after the $12 billion Mississippi flood of 1993.

He continued, “Meanwhile, the federal government has paid farmers to convert about 600,000 acres of farmland back to wetlands.… It is not yet clear whether the lesson will stay learned in the Bush administration, [whose] budget plan has prompted harsh criticism from state disaster officials and environmentalists for eliminating flood prevention initiatives, including a $162 million program that pays farmers to restore wetlands.” The Bush administration’s flood creation agenda eventually failed to pass, and most of the wetlands restoration funds were restored to the 2002 Farm Bill.

For Humans, Unnatural Disasters Come Naturally

Anthropogenic disasters aren’t new, of course. Boston has long been addicted to molasses-rich Boston-style baked beans (hence its nickname “Beantown”), and this led to one of the city’s more memorable anthropogenic disasters (no, I’m not referring to deadly clouds of digestive methane). In 1919, a molasses tank ruptured, and over 2 million gallons washed over Boston’s North End. The 8-foot wall of goo drowned 21 people and knocked down a fire station.

Tragic, yes. Toxic, no. Long-lasting damage, none. Today, though, nontoxic industrial accidents are almost unheard of. Most spills, explo- 219

sions, and fires now involve noxious materials, often with long-lasting health effects. Even worse, many of the ill effects don’t strike until years, even decades later, which retards our disuse of inappropriate materials.

On April 7, 2000, the Chalk Point Generating Station of the Potomac Electric Power Company (PEPCO) accidentally dumped over 120,000 gallons of oil into Maryland’s Patuxent River. Six hundred people were immediately employed to operate over 50,000 feet of protective booms in an effort to minimize damage to 17 miles of the river’s shoreline. Despite this, 76 acres of wetlands and 10 acres of shoreline were oiled.

Daily news bulletins documented the cleanup effort, but—with the exception of an April 21, 2000, Washington Post article by Raymond McCaffrey—almost no attention was focused on the suffering and deaths of the wildlife (an estimated 553 ruddy ducks, 376 muskrats, and 122 endangered diamond terrapins died, to name just three high-profile species), or of the long-term effects the residual oil would have on the ecosystem. It’s also telling that almost all wildlife rescue efforts were volunteer-based, rather than hired and paid for by the power company.

It was two years before a token $2.7 million ecological restoration plan was announced by a combination of federal and state agencies, designed to make the politically well-connected PEPCO restore the entire area to “pre-spill conditions.” It was “token” in relation to the more than $65 million spent on cleaning up the oil, which—while removing the oil—leaves lifeless, detergent-contaminated land in its wake. “Doggone, if you’re going to spend seventy to one hundred million to clean it, spend a few more to restore it,” said former Maryland senator “Bernie” Fowler, head of the Patuxent River Oil Spill Citizens Advisory Committee, in a May 31, 2002, Washington Post article, also by McCaffrey.

Oil spills occur hundreds of times a day around the world. It’s become so normal that only truly momentous spills make the evening news anymore (unless they’re local). The restoration of oil spills is a hugely profitable and hugely tragic industry that desperately needs to grow a heart. Although mechanical efforts to minimize the spread of oil and to clean up what has already spread can be heroic, inattention to long-term ecosystem effects and rescue of animal victims is rampant.

Disastrous Accounting

New technological monitoring and feedback systems are vital, but so are more integrated and more effective legal and accounting systems, designed to deal with disaster. As with so many of the world’s problems, new development-style accounting practices are at the root of many or 220

even most anthropogenic disasters. Fortunately, disasters are having the healthy effect of stimulating a reassessment of these antiquated systems. They are (slowly) evolving into a form that stimulates and supports restorative development.

For example, Lester Brown reports in his book Eco-Economy (2001) that the Yangtze River floods of 1998 made China realize that trees were worth three times more standing than logged. But because new development-based accounting systems are unable to factor-in ecosystem services, most nations still feel compelled to log.

Just as Mozambique is becoming aware of how expensive it can be to magnify natural floods with deforestation, dams, and inappropriate development, so too has China. China has now realized that in many cases logging (especially clear-cutting) often inhibits economic growth, by causing “natural” disasters, by sabotaging farm production (via decreased rain), and by destroying fisheries (via silted rivers).

The Chinese calculations didn’t take all factors into consideration— such as how deforestation reduces the useful life of dams via silt buildup—so its factor of three is probably quite conservative. However, it was enough to motivate the $12 billion reforestation program mentioned in Chapter 1.

Despite formidable political barriers, adoption of restorative accounting (full cost accounting applied within the context of the trimodal development perspective) will likely hit the tipping point in several countries this decade. I mention it in this chapter because one of its major catalysts will probably be disasters. More specifically, we need to properly account 221

for anthropogenic disasters, so that our legal and budgetary systems can become a tool for reducing them, can better mitigate their economic disruption, and can properly prepare for the ensuing restoration.

“Creeping Crud,” and Other New Trends in Anthropogenic Disasters

The above quote ignores the effects of the nonlinear dynamics—such as Allee effects—that are so common in nature. However, it certainly seems reasonable to assume that lots of little insults tend to create a big problem over time. That’s the mechanical view we were taught of the world.

Parfit was probably as surprised as anyone by the recent catastrophic fishery declines that he had searched for in the early ‘90s. But he was absolutely right that the little things we do each day are more damaging to the world than are the major oil spills and other “official catastrophes” (other than nuclear accidents, due to the damage they do over tens of thousands of years).

Besides “creeping crud,” there are many forms of human-caused disasters, currently masquerading as natural, that are only now beginning to get researched (again, because some of them are politically sensitive). For instance, in 1989, nuclear tests in Kazakhstan triggered so many earthquakes and radioactive gas discharges from the earth’s crust that local miners went on strike until the underground explosions were stopped.

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In the thousand years prior to the nuclear tests in neighboring Kazahkstan, Iran had just three major earthquakes. In the 30 years since testing began, Iran suffered 60 damaging earthquakes. Some geologists also suspect that subterranean oil helps lubricate the movement of tectonic plates, and that sucking oil fields (and aquifers) dry has increased the frequency and/or severity of earthquakes.

It would be absurd to leave this subject without mentioning global climate change, because it will likely give rise to the largest new category of anthropogenic “natural” disasters. (Global climate change’s only potential competitor for this honor is the genetic engineering industry, should pathogenic (to humans, wildlife, livestock, crops, etc.) organisms and/or DNA strands go “feral.”) Global climate change is expected to (or might already) include increased (or more severe) floods, fires, droughts, storms, human/crop/livestock plagues, and ecosystem collapses, not to mention the extinction of species that can’t adapt or migrate quickly enough.

But “mention” it is all we’ll do, for two reasons: (1) global climate change is far too complex to cram into the few pages that are available, and (2) global climate change, at present, is mostly a matter of prevention, not restoration (though this status may change more suddenly than we expect: remember that climate dynamics are nonlinear).

On the other hand, I can’t resist taking a moment to ask two (unoriginal) questions of any readers resisting efforts to reduce the emission of carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gases). You say global climate change hasn’t been proven (to your satisfaction) to be anthropogenic, but what’s the downside of proceeding on the assumption that it is caused by 223

human activity? Are you afraid that the world will become too clean… unnecessarily healthful… that we’ll have too high a quality of life?

Such attitudes make me wonder if one of the greatest values of restorative development is that it’s raising our standards. We had become so complacent about pollution that we demanded proof of impending global catastrophe before feeling justified in reducing it. Now, as new development is increasingly seen as the enemy of progress rather than its source, we’re finally admitting that our current world is not healthful enough. We’re actively cleaning the planet, not “just” reducing the rate at which we despoil it. With luck, restoration will trigger a feedback loop, where each act of restoration will raise our expectations, which—in turn—increases demand for restoration.

Radioactive Disasters

We all know about Chernobyl. Well, we know that it happened: The reporting of its true extent, and its long-term implications, was—and still is—strongly discouraged in most nuclear countries. Governments usually justify this policy to the press under the umbrella excuse of “avoiding public panic.” Chernobyl was too big to hide, but most nuclear accidents are easily hidden, especially outside North America and the U.K., because they are silent, invisible, and odorless.

Scientists posit that there’s now no human, domestic animal, or wild creature on earth whose body doesn’t contain a bit of Chernobyl: we only differ in degree of contamination. Once powdered fissionables get spread by wind and rain, cleanup and restoration seem all but impossible.

After all, few toxins or isotopes are monitored, and none broadly and on a regular basis. Thus, our “monitoring system” for unreported— and reported —industrial and military accidents consists mostly of watching for unusual disease clusters. Due to the long time delay between 224

occurrence and awareness, it may seem as if there’s nothing we can do to remediate these disasters now. Fortunately, this isn’t true.

Cleaning up all this nonlocalized creeping crud is where the combination of restorative technologies (mentioned in Chapter 10) and restorative development comes in. If all of our water treatment systems discharge water that is cleaner than the original source; if all contaminated industrial and war sites are properly remediated; if ongoing contamination is reduced by a worldwide, Internet-based grid of 24/7 toxin monitors (integrated with investigative agencies, dedicated courts, cleanup crews, and restoration firms); then we will see the background levels of radioactivity and other pollution start to come down.

NATURAL DISASTER RESTORATION

Thirty-one bridges, two hundred culverts, and 75 miles of track were destroyed, moved, or buried on the September day described above. Thousands of trees were blown across the remaining rails. Over five million feet of telephone and signaling wires lay in a tangled mess. Freight sheds and passenger stations were wiped out or lifted off their foundations and relocated. But restoration began immediately: “Over 5000 men, including engineers, linemen, trackmen, pile drivers, divers, skilled and unskilled laborers, toiled night and day in 3 shifts to restore in record time the vital life-line between New England and points south and west,” to continue the essay’s narration.

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“In 2 days partial passenger service had been restored between Boston and New York, with bus detour around flood-devastated areas. In 6 days through freight service had been restored between New York and important New England points. In 13 days through rail passenger service was restored on the Shore Line between New York and Boston.” In the front of the booklet, an open letter “to the officers and employees” from the New Haven Railroad Trustees concluded, “The restoration of the railroad to a condition permitting nearly normal operation in such an unbelievably short time has made it evident that in capacity and morale the railroad organization is able to meet the severest test with a spirit so commendable that it is the admiration of everyone.” Here in the twenty-first century, where government bailouts and corporate whining seem to be the norm, we would do well to keep the New Haven Railroad’s rapid, self-organized disaster restoration response in mind.

Catastrophe as Status Quo

Such disasters—and heroic responses—are not only nothing new; they are downright normal in some parts of the world. Floods directly affect some 100 million people every year. Take Central America, for instance. The capital of El Salvador, San Salvador, has been destroyed by earthquake no fewer than 10 times in the past four centuries. Not just hit by earthquakes… absolutely destroyed. Earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, and hurricanes devastate the half-dozen countries of Central America so frequently that we normally only hear of the ones that do severe damage to multiple countries. The governments of these countries are so inured to injury that they usually don’t call the complete destruction of a town a disaster. They save that word for national-level events. The loss of a mere community is just a “tragedy.”

As the Constraint Crisis continues to force people into riskier areas, the deadliness of earthquakes and hurricanes will increase, even if their strength and frequency remains the same. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, 1999 and 2001 were normal years in terms of the number of earthquakes, but they were unusually deadly. Earthquakes killed 22,711 people in 1999, and 65 significant earthquakes in 2001 killed 21,436 people. There’s nothing linear about earthquake patterns, though, which is why 2000 saw only 231 deaths.

At $25 billion, the most costly natural disaster in U.S. history was 1994’s Northridge earthquake in California. The most costly in the world was 1995’s earthquake in Kobe, Japan. In 20 seconds, it did over $100 billion dollars worth of damage, left 300,000 people homeless, collapsed 111,123 buildings, severely damaged 137,287 buildings, killed 6,400 people, and injured over 40,000 people.

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TOP 24 VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS OF ALL TIME, IN TERMS OF (RECORDED) HUMAN DEATHS

See Table

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Both the number of deaths and the amount of damage to assets vary widely due to socioeconomic factors. Earthquakes are costlier in countries with weak building codes or corrupt enforcement, and they are deadlier, because most victims die in collapsed buildings. On the other hand, the February 28, 2001, 6.8 magnitude earthquake in the Seattle-Tacoma area, which has fairly advanced seismic codes, recorded no deaths (though 400 were injured) but still managed to rack up $1.5 billion worth of restoration work. 227

Aftermaths of disasters last a lot longer than is apparent from their short shelf life on the evening news. Hurricane Mitch, which hit Honduras the hardest, wasn’t just a 1998 disaster: it’s still killing people today and will be spawning recovery and restoration activities for some time to come. In fact, the immediate deaths caused by disasters—especially those like Mitch, which destroy infrastructure—aren’t always the greatest toll. As of 2002, large numbers of people in Honduras are dying of malnutrition and waterborne diseases directly attributable to Mitch’s infrastructure destruction.

Less than a year after Mitch, the world community had rounded up some $9 billion in disaster relief and rebuilding funds. Honduras required over $1 billion for infrastructure restoration alone (out of a $4 billion reconstruction master plan). Just as nature uses storms to cleanse and renew, very few major disasters are without benefits to their human victims. Honduras, for instance, is taking advantage of the Mitch reconstruction to restore and reform its national school system. Honduran children had suffered a horribly dilapidated educational infrastructure for three decades. It didn’t work very well, and they had a 30 percent illiteracy rate and a 43 percent graduation rate—and that’s for primary school.

In the United States, we’ve been lucky so far. Few of us realize that we have more active volcanoes than all but two countries: Indonesia and Japan. Our active volcanoes aren’t all remote, either; near Washington’s Mt. Rainier, tens of thousands of folks in the Seattle-Tacoma area are living on top of the semi-dried mudflows from the last eruption.

ISSUES AND INSIGHTS

1. Missed opportunities to take advantage of ecological disasters One of the many anthropogenic tragedies to hit the Great Lakes in recent decades has been the invasion of the zebra mussel, introduced via the bilgewater of ships. In addition to displacing native species, these mussels have caused millions of dollars of damage to industry and public infrastructure by clogging water pipes. That much is well known.

An incredible opportunity for restoring the Great Lakes was offered us in 2001, when the waters of Lake Erie were the cleanest they had been in decades. Lake Erie owed its cleanliness to the massive filtering of the water performed by those invasive zebra mussels. In fact, the water became so clean that the mussels started dying off, having proliferated beyond the ability of the Great Lakes to supply them with edible filth (thanks to modern pollution laws). 228

Therein lay the opportunity. Billions of zebra mussels had been sequestering untold tons of toxic metals, industrial chemicals, and organic waste. If a concerted effort had been made to harvest them before they died and decomposed (releasing all that pollution back into the water), the whole episode would have had a silver lining. Leaving the zebra mussels in place, on the other hand, released all that captured pollution back into the lakes, giving the surviving mussels their food back, leading to their renewed proliferation.

This lost opportunity relates to “process blindness” (mentioned in Chapter 5); our cultural and professional tendency to focus on things, rather than processes.

2. Insufficient focus on environmental restoration following war

There’s so much human tragedy, loss of precious heritage, and destruction of vital infrastructure in most wars that both contamination cleanup and ecosystem restoration often take a distant back seat to more urgent (though not necessarily more important) needs. Often, the reconstruction money runs out before they are addressed at all.

At the time of this writing, we have a wonderful opportunity brewing in Afghanistan. In a statement issued by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) on December 6, 2001, Klaus Toepfer, UNEP’s Executive Director, said, “Armed conflict, which has been waged in Afghanistan for at least 20 years, can lead to environmental degradation in areas such as freshwater, sanitation, forests and soil quality. A healthy environment is a prerequisite for sound and sustainable development. People cannot secure real and sustainable economic development against a background of contaminated water, polluted land, and marginalized natural resources.”

While acknowledging that attending to the humanitarian needs of the Afghan people must take priority, Toepfer affirmed that UNEP was ready to assist in the forthcoming rehabilitation and reconstruction phase. This will be vital if the restoration of this tragic nation is to include the natural environment, as well as the built and socioeconomic environments.

3. “Donor fatigue” and quick fixes As with ecological restoration, the restoration of a society and nation takes time. Initial restoration successes must be closely monitored and managed to ensure that a just, open society emerges. Simply rebuilding demolished infrastructure isn’t enough—but this phase alone often exhausts donors.

Long-term strategies must restore both the government and the access of local businesses to opportunities and resources. Lacking that, nascent governments are easily subverted by military leaders, organized 229

crime, radical religious fundamentalists, and/or foreign resource extraction megabusinesses. Such situations disenfranchise the poorer elements of the population, who often turn to guerilla warfare and/or terrorism in desperation, to begin the cycle again.

4. Failure to take a regional approach Long-term civil wars and other extended conflicts can destabilize an entire region. For instance, Afghanistan’s triple whammy of Soviet invasion, Taliban suppression, and U.S. invasion has significantly affected the neighboring states of Pakistan, Tajikstan, Uzbekistan, and the Kyrgyz Republic.

Besides aiding nearby nations directly, restoration plans must often involve them in the restoration of the war-torn county. “Rehabilitation and reconstruction will require a long-term approach for all the neighboring countries,” said Yoshihiro Iwasaki, a director of the Asian Development Bank (concerning the restoration of Afghanistan), in a February 2002 issue of World Press Review. ⁵

The Age-Old Disaster and War Restoration Industry

Restoring the world after disaster and war is usually perceived as the most heroic of the restoration industries. This is probably a good thing, because disasters and wars are not in short supply (and probably never have been) and only promise to increase in the twenty-first century.

According to Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurance company, 2000 was a record year for natural disasters, and the company expects global climate change, combined with rising populations, to make coming years even more costly. The number of natural disasters jumped from 750 in 1999 to 850 in 2000, although the death toll was much lower— 75,000 in 1999 vs. 10,000 in 2000—because the disasters tended to strike less-populated areas in 2000.

Material damage was pegged at $30 billion for the year 2000, but only $7.5 billion of that was insured. Storms accounted for 73 percent of insured losses, and floods for 23 percent. The biggest single event of 2000 was in Mozambique, where floods left half a million people homeless. Forest fires did over $1 billion in damage in 2000, just in the United States.

As a direct result of the Constraint Crisis, ever-increasing numbers of people are living in harm’s way: near volcanoes, in floodplains, on coastlines, etc. For instance, one out of every twelve people in the world now 230

lives dangerously close to an active volcano. During the 1980s, more people were killed by volcanic eruptions than in any other decade of the twentieth century since 1902, when three Caribbean eruptions killed some 35,500 people (over 29,000 people died in Mt. Pelee’s eruption in Martinique alone).

The characteristics of disaster and war reconstruction funding—its suddenness and uncertainty (concerning the eventual total)—usually scare away all but the largest, best-capitalized firms. This is a shame, because smaller firms could bring much-needed new thinking to the process, and there are good profits to be made.

It’s generally considered unseemly to talk about profits related to disaster and war reconstruction, which is another reason the players in this industry tend to be a tight-knit little group. This is rather ironic, since we have so little difficulty talking about the profitability of military contractors, who provided the weapons and machines that created the destruction.…

The funding uncertainties are somewhat ameliorated by the previously mentioned “automatic funding” factor, which helps make this restoration industry especially vigorous. Disaster and war restoration is almost never a “yes/no” question; only a “how much” question. The funds are usually available, often very quickly. Of course, the complexion of the victims, as well as the strategic value of their resources, can make a big difference in both the speed and adequacy of that restoration funding, but that’s another story. Suffice it to say that this is a more-than-$100 billion growth business that shows few signs of weakening, and many signs of strengthening.

The World Restoration Bank?

Organizational agendas and strategies change regularly, but name changes are far less frequent. Thus, many restorative activities are hidden within organizations whose names, slogans, and mission statements are loaded with references to new development, conservation, etc. For instance, the World Bank has a program called “Alliance for Forest Conservation and Sustainable Use,” but here’s an excerpt from its website:

It was hard not to notice that “restoration” was used five times in that passage, whereas “conservation” and “sustainable” weren’t used once. Yet both of those latter words are present in the name of the alliance, and “restoration” isn’t. The number of such restoration conferences and projects, involving large institutions long associated with new development, has flourished in recent years. But names haven’t kept up.

The World Bank is the leading institution in the business of making war and disaster restoration loans. The bank was established, along with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944. The two entities were assigned different but complementary ends. The IMF’s goal is to protect the international monetary system. This usually means helping distressed countries overcome balance-of-payments problems. The World Bank is primarily focused on development and redevelopment.

The World Bank has been trying, largely unsuccessfully, since 1995 to execute its projects (mostly infrastructure-related) in ways that don’t produce the environmental, economic, political, and social disasters that long typified its efforts. (The bank hired a consultant in the early ‘90s to determine how it could avoid doing so much damage. The consultant’s conclusion was that only dissolving the bank would achieve that aim. Strangely, his contract wasn’t renewed.)

In this case, adopting a more restoration-oriented name would simply be a matter of going back to the bank’s roots. The World Bank’s full name (which it rarely uses) is the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. It was created primarily to promote postwar reconstruction. Given its atrocious record in new development—and given the current proliferation of conflicts and disasters—the bank might do well to drop the “development” and focus on the “reconstruction.”

Even better, in terms of positioning itself within the Restoration Economy, the bank could rename itself the “World Restoration Bank.” This would be in line with the likely emergence (in the near future) of Departments of Restorative Development within city, state, and national governments. It would also tie in the bank nicely with the United Nations, 232should the U.N. be wise enough to approve the aforementioned proposal to designate the twenty-first century “The Century of Restoration.”

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Of the myriad forms of catastrophes inflicted daily by nature, by humans, and by nature aided by humans, we’ve barely scratched the surface. On beaches, for instance, coastal storms are happening at almost every moment, somewhere on the planet. Even nonhurricane-level storms do tremendous damage to beach properties. Many excellent books are already in print on that subject, though, so let’s stick to the big picture.

Disasters and wars destroy natural, built, and socioeconomic systems, so it’s fitting that it is the last of the eight restoration industries we discuss. It should be obvious that an integrated plan for restoring war and major disaster damage would include many—maybe all—of the other seven restorative industries. But it’s the suddenness of the degradation, as well as the urgency of the restoration, that adds very unique characteristics to the disaster/war restoration industry.

Let’s end this discussion with a story that elegantly combines natural disaster, global warming, and other anthropogenic influences with the serendipitous opportunity for extensive restoration that major disasters so often offer. On December 26, 1999, winds exceeding 100 miles per hour lashed France, something that had never before happened in recorded history. Called an “act of God,” the storm was exactly the sort of freak event that has become normal (kids are throwing snowballs in Venice, Italy, as I write this passage), thanks most likely to global climate change. Besides killing 91 people, denying electricity and phone service to tens of thousands, and devastating 300,000 farms, the gales flattened 1.24 million acres of “forest,” some 360 million trees.

I enclose “forests” in quotes because these were actually industrial tree farms, containing miles and miles of near-identical trees of the same age. It was this lack of age diversity and species diversity that made the damage far worse than it would otherwise have been. Large trees protect smaller ones from wind and prevent the domino effect that struck the French tree plantations.

Now, here’s the serendipity. Just before the storm struck, the Worldwide Fund for Wildlife-France (WWF-France) had just recruited Daniel Vallauri to head its new Living Forest Campaign. He was just starting to map his strategy when the storm made the path clear, and he renamed the program “Forest Restoration.” In a December 13, 2000, Environmen- 233

tal News Network article entitled “France Digs in to Restore Its Forests,” Sally Zalewski wrote, “WWF-France has come up with a comprehensive forest restoration plan. Instead of focusing on wood production and agricultural methods of exploitation, the group is pressing for a more global use of the forest, encompassing leisure and sports activities, water and soil protection and stressing the importance of maintaining biodiversity.” We’ve now explored, very superficially, the current state of restorative development in both the natural and the built environments. It’s time to step back a bit and think about all this activity in a larger context. What does restorative development really mean to the future of the world in general?

A SMALL SAMPLING OF OPPORTUNITIES

Business and investment

• The dearth of political will to address global climate change means big opportunities in disaster restoration, but investing in property insurance companies could be extremely risky.
• The growth of toxic disasters and “brown wars” means there’s a great deal of technological overlap with the brownfields restoration industry. Some firms already do both, but it’s an overlooked expansion market for many firms from each industry.
• The fact that disasters and wars tend to inflict damage on such a wide spectrum of natural and built assets makes this the most logical restoration industry for the first “hyperintegrated” restoration megafirm to emerge. The first company to create divisions for all eight restoration industries— and to integrate them effectively—will find ready customers among cities and countries in need of extensive rebuilding. The expertise thus acquired would position that firm perfectly for less-urgent markets, such as metropolitan areas embarking on a comprehensive, long-term course of cultural, environmental, and economic revitalization.

NGOs and other nonprofits

• How about a public TV channel devoted to restorative development? War and disaster reconstruction could be the “action heroes.”
• As comprehensive restoration megafirms (see above) emerge, especially those focused on the disaster/war industry, they will require a multitude of effective partnerships with professional associations, technical societies, citizen-based activist and watchdog groups, etc. The NGOs who are most proactive in forming such partnerships will likely be the big winners. 234The obvious flip side of the spill-related cleanup expenses cited here is that they are revenues for restoration firms. Even a “little” disaster like Pepco’s Patuxent River spill has “generated” $60 million so far. But governments are overlooking a related opportunity. Larger cleanup fines—along with more effective prosecution—are needed to provide true deterrent effect. Fully funded disaster-recovery projects have tremendous potential for revitalizing communities, so they should tap the “upside” of disasters (the opportunity they frequently offer for rebirth). Cities must learn to avoid being left holding the bag when companies are folded to avoid retribution, or when corporate PR agencies short-circuit fines via specious arguments like “saving jobs.” Fines are a legitimate public revenue source and management tool with many positive side effects, since they both repair and prevent disasters (but only when large enough and certain enough). Such enhanced accountability will result in more comprehensive liability insurance, so this strategy shouldn’t damage a community’s attractiveness to legitimate businesses.

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¹ For our purposes, the initial humanitarian emergency response is not considered part of the restoration response.

² “Depleted Uranium in Serbia and Montenegro,” United Nations report, March 2002.

³ Naomi Koppel, “Yugoslavia Still Contaminated by Depleted Uranium Three Years After NATO Bombing,” Associated Press, March 28, 2002.

⁴ Steve Conner “The Uranium Minefield,” The Independent, January 26, 2001.

⁵ Nadeen Iqbal, “Mission: Afghanistan—The Monumental Task of Reconstruction,” World Press Review, February 2002.