LONDON (AlertNet) -- Donors dug into their pockets deeper and faster than ever before to support the survivors of the Indian Ocean tsunami, but will the unprecedented outpouring of money translate into long term concern for other emergencies or will it actually hurt aid agencies' efforts to raise money for other causes?

Days after the disaster, initial pledges by governments -- which usually provide the bulk of emergency funds -- were outstripped by donations from individuals, churches, schools, companies and community groups. The British Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), an umbrella organisation that coordinates fundraising for international disasters, reported receiving 166,936 online donations in just 24 hours, raising nearly £11,000,000 -- a world record. Private donations worldwide have exceeded $1.2 billion. Governments followed suit, and the U.N. estimates that between $3 and $4 billion has now been pledged.

As the initial shock of the disaster subsides, NGOs and commentators are asking whether the tsunami fundraising effort will wake the affluent nations to the suffering of many millions of others across the world or if it will simply capture a disproportionate share of limited resources, leaving less telegenic causes struggling for donations. Should supporters of these causes be heartened by the evident compassion of the tsunami donors or be concerned that the well will run dry?

AlertNet asked four experts.

Graham Wood, head of policy, Ockenden International:

The appeals for the tsunami have raised some $4 billion in the past month. This contrasts with a global annual aid spend of some $20 billion. Is spending 20 percent of an annual budget on this crisis appropriate? Or is the total sum spent so insignificant that it makes little difference?

In many countries, including the UK, it would appear that the public response has led and the governments followed. While this shows compassion, it also demonstrates the capacity of the media to influence and direct. In a world where six million children under five die from malnutrition every year and more than one billion live on less than one dollar a day, the 226,000 who died in the tsunami represent relatively small, if tragic, numbers.

The money spent on the Asian crisis, and I am not at all suggesting there should not be a response, is unlikely to be new money. Many countries, including the UK, allocate a percentage of their annual spend for disasters. It will inevitably mean there is less to spend on, say, the Democratic Republic of the Congo where more than three million have died in recent years. The public purse is also finite.

However, it is not just money for reducing poverty that will be affected. It is also the general public's perception that this is the largest crisis for years and the number one priority. While the Make Poverty History campaign seeks to educate and influence public as well as government opinion to tackle the causes of poverty, a focus on disaster response conveys the wrong message. It is this focus on disaster response, rather than the alleviation of the causes of disaster and poverty, that is dangerous. Prevention is always better than cure, unless you happen to want dramatic television footage.

Martyn Broughton, head of communications, Medecins Sans Frontieres UK:

The earliest evidence from our donors suggests that MSF UK's ability to raise funds for other emergency medical work is not likely to be undermined by the tsunami. There could be lots of reasons why that might not apply to other charities, and we can't be sure yet of the trend for us, but it is encouraging, so far.

The first indications were from people phoning to give money for the tsunami work. The generous support for MSF from around the world meant that we very quickly covered the likely costs of our emergency response for the tsunami victims.

We suspended fundraising for that disaster and asked people if they would consider giving to our ongoing work in the many other places where people were suffering. If they really wanted to give to the tsunami area, we suggested the DEC appeal. More than three quarters of those callers were happy to give to our other work. A significant number of our existing supporters have since been calling to ask that their money should go to places like Darfur, that are not getting noticed so much.

We also found from our website donations that in the week after the tsunami, 10 times as many people were signing up for monthly donations. These are very explicitly not tsunami-related but for our "routine" programmes. Our Christmas mailbag was bigger because of the tsunami, but there were at least as many people as usual who were giving to our other work. None of this is very conclusive about long-term concern and continuing generosity, but it is a positive sign from our supporters at least.

Lawrence Haddad, director of the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK:

The moral case for private citizens to give to new emergencies in the future is unlikely to be as clear as it was with the tsunami, an unprecedented natural disaster that could not be blamed on human action or inaction and affected rich and poorer countries alike.

With conflict, epidemics and financial disasters, it is harder for some people to identify or empathise with innocent victims. Affected citizens are often seen as part of the structure that created the emergency. For rich country governments, their ability to give to these types of emergencies is probably depleted, given that they have used up much of their contingency funding on the tsunami.

For everyday emergencies, I don't see a structural shift upwards in the propensity of private citizens to give to these causes. It is easier to visualise the terrible image of your child being swept away by water than it is to visualise them being broken over several months by malnutrition. Private givers to everyday emergencies will continue to be in it for the long haul, with few new long-term givers for this type of emergency.

I am more optimistic that donor governments will be able to leverage public interest in development for everyday emergencies -- they are already trying very hard to do this -- for Africa and elsewhere. But the media have to fuel this by picking up on the drama of the increasingly intertwined fates of the rich and poor over the next ten years. It is a story that will run and run.

Adele Harmer, Research Fellow, Humanitarian Policy Group, Overseas Development Institute:

It would be a significant shift if global giving changed on the basis of the tsunami response and translated into long-term concern for the so-called silent emergencies.

But let’s be clear. The tsunami was anything but a silent emergency. It was very, very loud -- most natural disasters are. And, for all the right reasons, governments and their publics have responded, as they have in many other, albeit less devastating, natural disaster scenarios.

The silent emergencies problem is something altogether different that, sadly, won't be addressed by the current generous spike in giving. Countries that were off the radar screen -- and more notably, off the television screen -- before the tsunami hit, still remain off the radar screen. Until donor governments actively pursue policies of funding according to need, and private sources of funding follow suit, a shift towards the less telegenic emergencies is unlikely to occur.