Man-Made Disasters Behind Natural Disasters: A Proposal to Use Donations to Monitor the Government
Many people view natural disasters as acts of nature beyond human control, but in fact, many disasters hide government management failures behind them—they are typical man-made disasters. As the saying goes, “Three feet of ice does not form in a single day.” The problems behind disasters often accumulate over a long period and cannot be solved overnight.
However, when facing disasters, simply giving donations to the government often has little effect, because government officials generally have low efficiency, strong laziness, arrogance, and lack a sense of responsibility. Even if huge amounts of money are invested, if the human problem is not addressed, resources may be wasted.
Therefore, the truly effective approach is to use resources to monitor the government, restrain its behavior, and force it to take responsibility and improve its response to disasters.
Specific action plan is as follows:
Donate to private monitoring organizations
- Allocate funds to NGOs or dedicated monitoring organizations, rather than giving them to the government.
- Use donations to hire full-time staff to supervise relevant units involved in disaster events over the long term.
Establish a public and transparent monitoring system
- Update daily the solutions and progress of the government and relevant departments.
- Send staff to the field to supervise in person, take photos, check in, and ensure the information is accurate and reliable.
- Publish all progress and field images on websites or platforms, forming traceable records.
Use institutional restraint instead of pure donations
- A single large donation can support long-term monitoring, which may be more efficient than the government spending hundreds of millions of dollars itself.
- The focus is on constraining and holding human behavior accountable, rather than simply providing funds.
Strengthen civil society to promote government improvement
- When the public has the ability to monitor and publicly disclose government actions, the government’s inefficiency, laziness, and arrogance will be forced to be constrained.
- The goal of donations shifts from “emergency relief” to “establishing systems, increasing transparency, and promoting accountability,” fundamentally changing the conditions under which problems exist.
Conclusion
Natural disasters are often accompanied by man-made disasters. The core of the problem lies in human management and institutional failures. People should use resources to monitor the government, rather than simply donating to bureaucrats. Only transparent and institutionalized monitoring can truly force the government to improve and prevent disaster losses from being repeatedly amplified.
If you agree with this text, you can further develop it into:
- 💬 Social media posts (for young audiences)
- 🎤 TED / speech script (3-minute oral presentation)
- 📄 Public welfare proposal (for educational institutions, campus associations)