The recovery plan described the overarching vision: “To build the new Puerto Rico to meet the current and future needs of the people through sustainable economic development and social transformation transparent and innovative approaches to governance resilient, modern, and state-of-the-art infrastructure and a safe, educated, healthy, and sustainable society.” The next step to achieving this vision was breaking it down into specific goals regarding society, economy, resilience, and infrastructure. The recovery approach required emphasis on rebuilding a strong and competitive economy to which out-migrants might want to return. One commonality is that Puerto Rico also faced depopulation over time, with population reaching a high of about 3.8 million in the 2000 census, falling to just under 3.3 million in 2020. Puerto Rico has 1.5 percent of the land mass of Ukraine and about 8 percent of Ukraine’s population, so it is a considerably different problem on a very different scale, but there are still lessons to be learned across the physical, natural, and human infrastructure spectrum. Post-conflict recovery and post-natural disaster recovery are two different tasks, but the principles of planning and the strategy to build back thoughtfully rather than rebuild the infrastructure are the same. Hurricane Maria devastated the island, so a whole-of-island recovery plan was required. The government of Puerto Rico delivered a congressionally mandated economic and disaster recovery plan, which was unique in the disaster recovery literature in the scale and scope of the topics that it covered. Puerto Rico’s response to the devastation of Hurricane Maria in 2017 offers one example. In a whole-of-economy disaster, a visionary recovery plan can offer an integrated approach to recovery. These disasters are more appropriate to compare against Ukraine’s situation, given that the scale of the Russian attacks at this point seem focused on destroying infrastructure and depopulating the nation. There are fewer disasters with a whole-of-economy impact. There are many lessons from disasters across the globe, both human-caused and natural. In the recovery phase, actions are taken to return to some sort of “normal” where people can live, go to school, and go to work. This is the triage phase, and it involves doing whatever it takes to make people safe, now. Helping the people in the immediate aftermath of a disaster-ensuring clean water, adequate power, medical care to the sick and wounded-takes priority. The lesson from disasters is that the first step is response. Should the Ukrainian resistance prevail, and Ukraine maintain its status as an independent country, President Zelensky must plan the next steps for the nation. It is a man-made disaster relating to conflict, not a natural one relating to weather or earthquakes, but some of the lessons hold. And this invasion-with its increasingly indiscriminate targeting of physical, natural, and human infrastructure-has created a real disaster. If the destruction of so much of Ukraine’s infrastructure is put into a “disaster” framework, then the natural disaster response and disaster recovery offer a plethora of lessons. The invasion and the war may follow a twentieth-century playbook, but effective recovery is a twenty-first-century skill. It is difficult to talk about recovery while civilians are still under attack, while hospitals are being bombed, and where cities have lost power and water, but thinking about recovery means envisioning a post-conflict future, and that links to the twin messages of hope and the necessity to keep fighting. Cohen have even gone so far as to predict Putin will lose. It is clear that Russia is facing fierce resistance, and analysts such as Eliot A. There are many grim possibilities for future outcomes-but there is also the chance that some sort of settlement is reached that results in an independent Ukraine, with democratically elected leaders. Ukraine is a rich prize indeed, with substantial mineral resources, a strong agricultural sector, and of course human capital. A large country marches into a smaller, weaker neighbor with the intent of expanding its own territory and resources and imposing its own polity on another. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine comes straight out of the playbook of the last century.
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