The private sector and disaster recovery

Back in July we hosted this online discussion on the role of the private sector in disaster recovery and mitigation. Unfortunately, due to Katrina and the recent South Asia earthquake this archived discussion has been receiving considerable traffic. Hopefully this means that we will start to give greater importance to exploring how the private sector can help in such situations. For example, the rapid and effective response by companies such as Home Deport and Walmart following Katrina and the almost immediate creation of Risepak in Pakistan are successes that can be learned from. Likewise, as we move on, we must also focus attention on mitigation, not just recovery.

Update: Today is "Blog Quake Day" - an effort spearheaded by DesiPundit. (via Pakistan Earthquake 2005). Spread the word. This is the latest from the World Bank side.