TITLE:
Disaster Preparedness in the Philippines: From the Will to the Way
AUTHORS:
Angel Vicario-Merino, Noemi Muñoz-Agustín, Montserrat Ruiz-López, Jesús Guodemar-Pérez, Juan Pablo Hervás-Pérez, David Pérez-Manchón
KEYWORDS:
Hyogo, DRR, Disaster Response, Preparedness, Vulnerability
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Political Science,
Vol.9 No.3,
July
26,
2019
ABSTRACT: Geographically situated in the circle of fire in the
Pacific and bordering the pacific tectonic plate, makes the Filipino
archipelago one of the most disaster-prone areas in the world. As a result of
this exposure, it is estimated that an annual USD 7.893 million are spent directly to the multi-hazard
prevention, promotion and response, representing the 69% of social expenditure
in the country. Multilevel efforts to prevent the results of the disasters
hitting the Philippines have been developed, including the local, regional,
country and regional areas. These efforts are being developed at operational
and promotional levels, including the political initiatives at local, country
and regional frameworks. There have been political efforts to create guidelines
so as to work on disaster risk reduction and vulnerability reduction for the
most vulnerable countries, with the first world conference held in 1994. The
second one in Hyogo in 2005 produced a comprehensive guideline for the risk
reduction for the most vulnerable countries, focusing on those most at risk
like archipelagos, countries in high risk areas and high impact areas. There is
a surprisingly small amount of literature published concerning the impact of
the political initiatives and its impact on the health of such populated areas.
The paper describes the responses generated by the Filipino government after
Yolanda, based on the legal framework that Hyogo provided, as well as provides
a literature review of the published manuscripts on different sources,
finalising with several recommendations as the improvement of the coordination
and communication between levels of implementation, the clarification of the
real problems identified for each area and the coordination between all the
actors involved (local government, INGOs, regional government, international
initiatives…) in the DRR process in an area to avoid duplication of activities
and looking forward to engaging in synergetic initiatives.