MANILA — The wide array of climate data and forecasting available in the Philippines alone is not enough to make communities entirely resilient to disasters, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) said on Thursday.

At the closing press conference of the Asia-Pacific Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (APMCDRR) 2024, DENR Secretary Maria Antonia Yulo-Loyzaga explained that the varied contexts and situations of different areas entail the need to localize data to maximize the information it presents.

“We all know that there would different technical capacities, levels of knowledge and, of course, physical conditions that our different local governments face. Therefore we need to not only learn how to collect data that’s good, we also need to understand context,” she said.

“Once we understand context, the data has a greater meaning for us in terms of what it could be in terms of knowledge, information, and even intelligence in terms of our actions,” Yulo-Loyzaga added.

Coupled with localizing data is the need to seriously undertake climate and disaster risk assessments in order to approach risk management more comprehensively. These include studying the different social, cultural, and physical challenges a community goes through in the context of its exposure and vulnerability to natural hazards.

As United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) Head Kamal Kishore put it, “The fight against disasters will be either won or lost at the level of cities.”

The UN official adds assessments need not be done only after a natural hazard has swept through an area and caused massive damage.

“One popular, much-used metric is expected annual average loss. So it's not a loss that has happened, but you assess that over a long period of time. This is the kind of risk you have. These kinds of tools have been used for a long time in the insurance industry, but the public sector needs to embrace these tools,” he explained.

Planning must also be based, according to Loyzaga, not just on the possible based on past experiences, but also on the plausible or the things that might happen because of the uncertainties brought about by climate change.

THE PHILIPPINE SCENARIO

Localized data collection in the Philippines has already started following the development of platforms for local governments to share risk and disaster-related information.

The Department of Science and Technology’s (DOST) GeoRisk Philippines Initiative exemplifies how data from the national and local governments as well as from communities can be integrated to become useful in tracking and identifying various types of risk.

DOST Secretary Renato Solidum says different data-gathering tools have been in place and are being actively used by local governments.

“And there, they can put their local data o context para magkaroon ng tamang hazard and risk assessment and tamang intervention. So ‘yung ganong balakid nung unang panahon na minsan hindi na kukonsider ang local context ay madaling nang gawin ng ating lokal na pamahalaan kasi may plataporma na tayo na very agile and can gather any data that they want to put in,” he said.

(They can input their local data or context to be able to come up with the right hazard and risk assessment as well as intervention. So the earlier challenges of not considering local context can be addressed by local governments because we have platforms like these which are very agile and can gather any data that they want to put in.)

Other government agencies are also on board to contribute to reducing the impacts of extreme weather and climate change on their stakeholders.

For instance, the Department of Agriculture is working to ensure that food systems are climate risk prepared; the Department of Public Works and Highway’s focus is on resilient infrastructure programs, while the Department of Health is gunning improvements on the prevention of climate and waterborne diseases.

They will also be part of the Philippine delegation for the Conference of Parties 29 set to happen in November in Baku, Azerbaijan.

For his part, Department of National Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro highlighted the urgent need to revisit the country’s 14-year old Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Act.

“Because of changing circumstances, because of experiences in the field, we have been able to identify some gaps that need to be filled, some streamlining that needs to be done. And this is a constant exercise that should happen in most areas of government, but it is critical that it happens in disaster risk reduction in order to optimize and to focus government efforts in all aspects of the topic,” Teodoro said in an earlier plenary session.

OTHER IDENTIFIED CHALLENGES AND WAYS FORWARD

With the Asia-Pacific being the most prone region to climate risks, the challenges many countries face are similar despite having their own contexts.

Kishore says among the most notable of these challenges is the issue of finance.

“Governments have restricted limited fiscal space. But we also need better money. Money which is available at the right time in the right place to do the right kind of things and to have mechanisms from the national down to the local level to effectively use money for disaster risk reduction.”

Conversations on financing disaster risk reduction must continue so that countries may eventually source and allocate much-needed funding for different mitigation measures.

Because resilience involves all sectors, strong engagements between the public and private sectors, as well as civil societies, are also seen to drive countries towards better preparedness and response.

Another important point towards disaster risk reduction, Kishore adds, is ensuring inclusivity.

“Not only along gender but also you know persons with disability, Indigenous people, and other marginalized groups. There was a lot of focus on that and how do we increase, how do we make sure that disaster risk reduction efforts are inclusive?” Kishore said.

Governments and stakeholders across the Asia-Pacific Region have a lot of work cut out for them as the APMCDRR 2024 comes to a conclusion.

While it may take a while before all solutions discussed in the week-long conference are realized, experts and officials are one in underscoring the need to act swiftly to reduce risk and devastation as extreme weather brought about by climate change continues to happen more frequently throughout the world.