SUPER typhoon “Karding” should make the national government and local government units (LGUs) realize that it is high time to prioritize more proactive and preventive measures to ensure the resilience of vulnerable groups and economic sectors to the risks brought by disasters and climate change.
LGUs must abandon their reactive approach to managing disasters, which means responding only after a disaster has occurred and merely repairing or rebuilding what had been damaged. We must invest more in disaster prevention, risk reduction, and mitigation. We find that especially in poorer LGUs, there is a strong reactive post-disaster relief and rescue operation focus and not much on prevention and risk reduction.
But LGUs’ insufficient resources and political structures prevent them from investing in the right planning tools to be more prepared and truly resilient during disruptive events. We do not find enough investments in planning tools among poorer LGUs. They do not even have enough permanent personnel to manage geographic information system mapping functions. LGUs are at the forefront in their territories. Sadly, many of them do not have adequate personnel and equipment, making it very difficult to perform their functions.
Mainstreaming disaster risk reduction and management and climate change adaptation in local development plans is a big part of building resilient people and cities. Governments must enable people to adopt productive and sustainable livelihoods that can survive and thrive even during difficult situations.
While policies are in place at the national level, various challenges impede their implementation at the LGU level. The provincial and regional governments have a responsibility to coordinate and synchronize local development plans. Policies at the national level are important, but they do not effectively trickle down to the LGU level.
Another challenge is intergovernmental collaboration as many environmental problems cross administrative and political boundaries.
Frankly, eradicating poverty and hunger is key to building resilient Philippine cities. The country’s long-term local economic development plan must include situation-based recovery measures that can be implemented based on the circumstances and characteristics of a disaster. This can be achieved by adopting a development path that is disaster-resilient, risk-sensitive, ecosystem-based, and correlated with poverty eradication. The preparation of a long-term economic development plan should have a built-in post-disaster element, which should be done before a disaster comes.
