Chapter 2: The Four Phases and Who Does What¶

On April 25, 2015, an earthquake strikes Nepal. A second quake follows on May 12.

Eight months after the earthquake, as the emergency response winds down and the shelter coordination group pulls out, the government formally creates the National Reconstruction Authority. Its strategy fits in one sentence: let families rebuild permanent homes themselves, with cash grants paid out under conditions. The country lacks the skilled workers to rebuild on that scale, so training construction workers becomes a priority.

On March 31, 2016, the Authority publishes its guidelines for mobilizing NGOs. It asks them to focus on socio-technical support: inform, train, accompany. The state will pay the grants. In mid-April, the Authority starts signing grant agreements with households.

In remote areas, a humanitarian organization and its partner, a Nepali NGO, sign a tripartite agreement with the Authority. Beneficiaries are chosen from the list approved by the Authority, and the final list goes to the government's information services to avoid duplicates. The grant, about $3,000 (300,000 rupees), follows public policy: $500 at signing, 1,500 when the plinth is finished, 1,000 when the roof and a latrine are complete. Families organize in groups of ten, and each group must finish every member's house before the next installment is released. Before the second and third installments, government engineers check compliance with the national building code, using a checklist drawn up by the state.

The project lost nearly five months waiting for the guidelines, with the monsoon approaching. It enables 1,797 households to rebuild. Then, when the Authority allows NGOs to provide only technical support, the organization changes its method: it lets the state pay the grants and devotes itself to technical assistance, door to door. In about nine months, it reaches 7,000 more households.

In its lessons learned, it notes that by focusing on technical support from the start, it would have reached a much larger group, for a longer time.

What the scene teaches¶

The Nepal case is about housing, not the economy. But it shows how roles are distributed after a disaster, and what it costs to ignore them.

Public authorities lead, even when they arrive late. The reconstruction authority was created eight months after the earthquake; its rules for NGOs came out nearly a year after. In the meantime, organizations were preparing their own programs. When the rules arrived, they set the grant amount, its installments, the inspections and the beneficiary list, including for the organizations allowed to pay out the money themselves.

Those who fit into the public system reach further. The organization helped 1,797 households by paying out the money itself; it reached 7,000 more, in nine months, by letting the state pay and bringing what the state lacked: technicians who go from house to house. Its most useful contribution was skill more than money.

Recovery does not start on a fixed date. In Nepal, the emergency, the preparation of reconstruction and the first building sites overlapped for months. There was no day when "relief" stopped and "recovery" began.

Your club will find itself in the same position as this organization, on a smaller scale. It will need to know who leads, which rules apply, where the people who act meet, and what it can bring that no one else brings. This chapter gives it the map.

Recovery is never just a phase¶

For a long time, disaster aid was thought of as a sequence: first relief, then rehabilitation, then development. Specialists called this model the "continuum."

The guidance note on early recovery published in 2016 by the global group in charge of the field (the Global Cluster for Early Recovery) explicitly abandons it. It observes that the reality of responses, "particularly conflict related emergencies," requires humanitarian, recovery and development interventions that are "non-linear and simultaneous." Specialists now speak of a "contiguum." And the note sets out the sentence, already quoted in the introduction, that serves as this chapter's compass:

"Early Recovery is never just a 'phase'. It is a multidimensional process of recovery that begins in the early days of a humanitarian response."

The 2008 note that preceded it already said that early recovery "begins in a humanitarian setting."

One nuance matters for you. The 2016 text is aimed first at conflict-related crises, where relief and development run side by side for years. For sudden disasters, the International Labour Organization (ILO), in its 2016 guide on employment in situations of fragility, conflict and disaster, makes the same observation in its own words: when a disaster strikes suddenly, relief and development programs "often co-exist."

The practical consequence is simple. Your club does not have to wait for the official end of relief to think about the economy. From the first week, it can note which trades, shops and value chains have been hit. It will not necessarily act right away (Chapter 4 says when to make the shift), but it will not discover the subject in the sixth month.

The trilogy's four phases¶

This book belongs to a trilogy, and the trilogy divides the time of a disaster into four. Chapter 1 gave the diagram; here is what each phase asks of your club.

Phase	What is at stake	Where to find it
Before	knowing your risks, preparing the community and its incomes	the disaster guide; Chapter 15
During	saving lives, sheltering, feeding in the first days	the disaster guide
After	restarting incomes, markets and businesses, over two or three years	this book
Always	economic development of the area in normal times	the CED guide

This division is a tool of the trilogy, not an international standard. It does not contradict the "contiguum": the during and the after overlap. It serves to divide the work among the books, and to remind the club that the after always prepares a new before.

From relief to recovery: what changes¶

Between the during and the after, almost everything changes, except the people. A club that handled the emergency well risks repeating in the sixth month the moves that worked in the first week. The following table sums up what must change.

Dimension	During relief	During recovery
Goal	keep people alive	help them get their lives back
Tools	distribute, shelter, treat	assess, fund, train, reconnect markets
Money	emergency funds, disaster grant	district and global grants, partners
Skills	logistics, first aid, coordination	management, credit, trade, crafts
Pace	hours and days	months and years
Measure of success	vital needs covered	incomes and activities picking up

The "money" row has its counterpart in the rules of the Rotary Foundation. Under the Terms and Conditions in force in July 2026, the Disaster Response Grant funds "relief and recovery efforts" in areas affected by a natural disaster within the previous six months, and it is awarded only to districts in the affected area. It is a bridge for the first months, not a multiyear tool. Chapter 10 details the Foundation's three tools and how they hand off over time.

The three tracks over time¶

Chapter 1 presented the three-track model that the ILO carried over to disasters in its Recommendation No. 205 of 2017: stabilize incomes, restart the local economy, establish sustainable employment. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), in its 2022 guidance note on livelihoods and economic recovery, specifies how their intensity changes:

Track A (stabilizing livelihoods) has "a higher intensity at the onset of a crisis," then decreases in the medium and long term;
Track B (local economic recovery) starts at medium intensity, rises in the medium term, then decreases;
Track C (sustainable employment and inclusive growth) is low at first and grows gradually to its peak in the long term.

The 2013 summary of the UNDP guide adds that the three tracks should start early and, ideally, at the same time. They overlap; they do not follow one another.

flowchart LR
    subgraph T1["First weeks"]
        S1["Relief: very strong"]
        A1["Track A: strong"]
        B1["Track B: medium"]
        C1["Track C: low"]
    end
    subgraph T2["6 to 24 months"]
        S2["Relief: fading out"]
        A2["Track A: decreasing"]
        B2["Track B: peak"]
        C2["Track C: rising"]
    end
    subgraph T3["Beyond"]
        A3["Track A: low"]
        B3["Track B: decreasing"]
        C3["Track C: peak"]
    end
    S1 --> S2
    A1 --> A2 --> A3
    B1 --> B2 --> B3
    C1 --> C2 --> C3

This diagram is indicative: the periods at the top of each column are a proposal of this book to fix ideas, not a calendar taken from the sources. It reveals the club's ground. Track B, local economic recovery, peaks just as relief fades out and humanitarian agencies start to leave. That is the moment when your club, which stays, can be most useful.

How long recovery lasts¶

No international source sets a duration for recovery, and the most serious ones say so. The 2008 guidance note presents an illustrative eighteen-month calendar, drawn from a post-conflict context, and immediately warns: "it is much harder to set a firm time line for early recovery."

Yet the available benchmarks point to years, not months.

UNDP, in its 2013 note on emergency employment, indicates that these programs generally last up to six months after a small disaster, at least a year after a large one. It is an order of magnitude, not a rule.
An independent evaluation of UNDP economic recovery programs run from 2009 to 2012, published in 2014, finds that two- to three-year programs are too short to be sustainable, and recommends that donor support be secured "for at least a five-year time frame."
The disaster guide proposes a working timeline that runs from the disaster to the closing of a global grant in two to three years. It is a planning estimate, to be presented as such.

A Rotary case illustrates this. In the Philippines, Welsh clubs and the Rotary club of Iloilo handed over 55 fishing boats to a fishermen's association in Anilao at the end of 2018, five years after Typhoon Haiyan (Chapter 14).

The rule this book proposes: count on at least two to three years, and prepare from the start what will continue beyond. For a club whose presidency changes every year, that means a recovery project will span at least three presidencies. Chapter 11 shows how to organize so the project survives these handovers.

Who leads recovery¶

The government and local authorities¶

All the sources read agree on one point: recovery belongs to the affected country. The 2008 note puts it at the top of its coordination principles, "First and foremost, early recovery should be owned and led by national actors," and specifies that government structures should lead coordination. The 2016 note adds that successful early recovery requires a rapid shift from a response driven by international actors to one "led and managed by national authorities."

This leadership takes several concrete forms.

The Post-Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA). It is carried out at the government's request, with support from the European Union, the United Nations and the World Bank; its guide specifies that international agencies have no mandate to conduct it without that request (Chapter 3).
Reconstruction authorities. Nepal created its own eight months after the earthquake. In Indonesia, after the 2004 tsunami, the government agency for the rehabilitation and reconstruction of Aceh and Nias coordinated the effort until it closed in April 2009.
The rules of the game. Public grant amounts, beneficiary lists, building standards, guidelines for NGOs: in Nepal, they set what each organization could do.

The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, adopted in 2015, says the same thing for reconstruction. Its paragraph 33(i) calls for promoting cooperation among the institutions, authorities and stakeholders concerned, "including affected communities and business," given the complex and costly nature of reconstruction, "under the coordination of national authorities." Communities and businesses have their place; coordination falls to national authorities.

The humanitarian system¶

During relief, UN agencies, NGOs and the Red Cross coordinate through clusters: shelter, water, health, logistics and others. The system was created in 2005 by the Inter-Agency Standing Committee; among the first nine clusters was an "early recovery" cluster, led at the global level by UNDP.

This picture has changed since then: the disaster guide, which describes an "early recovery" cluster led by UNDP, gives the state of things in 2008. Since the 2016 note, early recovery runs first through coordination among the existing clusters. The note is categorical: "Creating a new coordination body for early recovery is never advised." National actors must be brought into the leadership of coordination. Depending on the country, recovery will therefore be discussed in the existing clusters, in a dedicated working group whose name varies, or directly with the national or municipal reconstruction authority. Chapter 12 explains how your club finds its place there.

Donors¶

Rebuilding a region costs far more than what humanitarian agencies mobilize. Major donors (World Bank, European Union, bilateral cooperation agencies, regional development banks) fund multiyear public programs. In Aceh, the Indonesian government and the international community created a multi-donor fund as early as May 2005, aligned with the government's reconstruction master plan; by the end of 2007, more than 80% of its funds were being implemented by national government agencies.

Your club will not negotiate with these donors. But it needs to know which major programs exist in its area, for two reasons: so as not to fund what a public program will fund anyway, and to spot the gaps these programs leave, often at the scale of a street or a value chain.

Rotary's place¶

Rotary has its own organization, which fits into this picture. The Rotary Foundation Code of Policies, in its October 2026 version, sets out the doctrine: "The role of Rotary International and The Rotary Foundation is to be a resource and to assist in long term disaster recovery."

Level	Role during recovery	See
Club	knows the area, carries the project on site, stays	Chapter 11
District	coordinates clubs, holds disaster and district grants	disaster guide, ch. 18; Chapter 10
Rotary Foundation	funds under its current rules; technical advisers	disaster guide, ch. 19; Chapter 10
Action groups	advise, connect, train	Chapter 11

Rotary Action Groups deserve a clarification, because their role is often misunderstood. The Rotary Code of Policies, in its October 2026 version, says that an action group "is not an agency of RI" and cannot act on behalf of Rotary International. It does not direct clubs or districts, and it can contact a club only with the express permission of the district governor, renewed each year. In practice, then, it is up to the club or the district to call on it.

Two action groups matter especially for a disaster.

DNA-RAG (Disaster Network of Assistance Rotary Action Group) defines its mission as mitigating the effects of disasters by strengthening preparedness, providing emergency response and "supporting long-term recovery." The Foundation's Code names it in its disaster policy.
RAGCED (Rotary Action Group for Community Economic Development) defines its mission as being a source of knowledge and expertise to help Rotarians plan, implement and manage sustainable economic development projects. According to its chair, the Rotary Foundation has reportedly given it a mandate for the economic recovery of disaster areas and for training communities before disasters, excluding immediate relief. To date, this mandate is known only through that correspondence; no public document read mentions it.

No document today describes a division of roles between these two groups. This book proposes a simple split, to be agreed between them: DNA-RAG supports the response and the coordination of the network; as soon as the question becomes "how will people get their livelihoods back?", the club and the district bring RAGCED into the design of the economic recovery. Chapter 11 details this proposal phase by phase.

Build back better, but to the scale of the place¶

One phrase comes up in every reconstruction plan: "build back better." It has an official definition, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2017 on the basis of report A/71/644:

"The use of the recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction phases after a disaster to increase the resilience of nations and communities through integrating disaster risk reduction measures into the restoration of physical infrastructure and societal systems, and into the revitalization of livelihoods, economies and the environment."

Note that the definition explicitly mentions livelihoods and the economy: building back better is not only about buildings. The PDNA guidelines on employment say so too: it means building back better infrastructure, "and also better livelihoods (better skills, wider access to markets, better compliance with labour regulations, and so on)."

The definition also has an official limit, and it protects your club from overly ambitious projects. The same PDNA guidelines specify: "Building back better does not imply a fundamental change in the preexisting economic and social development level of the disaster-affected area, but it does address some of its deficiencies through proposing improvements that are compatible with - and sustainable - under the existing level of development in the area."

For a club, the rule translates like this: improve what existed, do not invent a new economy. A fishing cooperative that starts again with better boats and better management is building back better. An industrial value chain imported into a fishing village is not.

What the club does: the "who does what" map¶

Before designing a project, your club maps the actors in its area. This is a first version: it will be completed in Chapter 12, when the club joins the coordination.

Step 1: find out who leads. Who is running the reconstruction: the city hall, a regional authority, a national authority created for the occasion? What rules has it published (public grants, beneficiary lists, guidelines for organizations)? Is a PDNA under way or published?

Step 2: find out where coordination happens. Which meeting brings together the actors working on livelihoods and the economy? Who convenes it? Chapter 12 details what your club does there.

Step 3: know who is already present. For each sector of interest to the club (retail, agriculture, fishing, crafts, credit, training), who is already active, where, and with what resources?

Step 4: locate Rotary. Is the district mobilized? Has it applied for a disaster grant? Has the governor been asked to bring in the action groups? Have partner clubs abroad come forward?

Step 5: spot the gaps. What no one is doing is often where your club will be useful: a street of small shops forgotten by the big programs, a local value chain threatened by in-kind aid, artisans who appear on no list.

The map fits in one table, updated every month in the early period.

Actor	What it does here	Contact and meeting	What it expects from the club
Reconstruction authority	strategy, public grants, lists	office name, meeting date	field information, compliance with rules
City hall	permits, markets, roads	elected official or lead office	liaison with shopkeepers
Humanitarian coordination	who does what, where	coordination meeting	reporting its activities
Chamber of commerce, associations	relations with businesses	designated contact	data, members, partnership
Lenders and microfinance institutions	credit, rescheduling	local branch	referred clients, cofunding
Rotary district	grants, club coordination	district disaster committee	file, reports, follow-up
Action groups	advice, connections	through the governor	a specific request from the club

This map is the first version of one piece of your club's recovery file. It will feed the assessment (Chapter 3), the shift decision (Chapter 4) and the coordination plan (Chapter 12).

The pitfalls¶

Pitfall	Why it happens	Remedy
Waiting for the "end of relief" to think about the economy	phases are assumed to be sequential	note affected activities from the first week
Setting up your own aid scheme	wanting to move fast	fit into public rules, even late ones
Paying out money where the state already pays	the gesture feels more concrete	bring what is missing: skills, follow-up, network
Creating one more coordination body	existing meetings seem slow	join the ones that exist
Planning a one-year project	pace of presidencies and budgets	think two to three years, and beyond
Promising to "build everything back better"	the phrase is appealing	improve what existed, to the scale of the place
Presenting an action group as a decision maker	confusion about its role	the club or district calls on it and decides

What your club now has in hand¶

At the end of this work, your club has a "who does what" map of its area: who leads the reconstruction, where coordination happens, who is already active in each sector, where Rotary stands, and what no one is doing. It knows that recovery does not start on a fixed date, that it will last several years, and that its own place is in the recovery of the local economy, alongside the authorities and not in their place.

In Nepal, the organization reached far more families the day it stopped paying out money itself and brought what the state lacked. To know where your area needs your club, you now have to look at what the disaster broke in its economy: that is the subject of the next chapter.