Tomorrow, Nov. 8, marks the second anniversary of Typhoon “Yolanda”/Haiyan making landfall in the Philippines. Yolanda remains one of “the most powerful storms to make landfall in recorded history.” The extent of damage it wrought speaks for itself: more than 6,300 lives lost, displacement of more than four million people, and the widespread disruption of economies and livelihoods as well as damage to homes and infrastructure across the Yolanda corridor.
All sectors of Philippine society responded. After the initial shock and paralysis, the national government, local governments, citizen organizations, the private sector and even academia were able to mobilize themselves, participate in the immediate relief, and play roles in the long road of rebuilding communities and ensuring greater resilience against natural disasters and the negative impact of climate change.
On a more informal basis, families, individuals and neighborhoods also got their act together to help themselves. I was able to see first hand all of these as I saw how relatives in the Leyte towns of Tanauan and Palo rise up to the challenge even as some family members perished from the storm surge.
Following Yolanda/Haiyan, we certainly have become better as a nation in preparing for natural disasters. The appointment by President Aquino of Undersecretary Alexander Pama as the country’s disaster czar has been helpful in this respect. A former navy chef and chief of staff of former Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro, Pama is a visionary. He is a brilliant and strategic thinker and implementor. In both Typhoons “Ruby” (in Decemebr 2014) and “Lando” a few weeks ago, Pama and his government colleagues did a good job reducing casualties.
A lot has been done, but the work is far from finished; after all, Yolanda was a particularly striking illustration of what it means for the Philippines to be ranked as the second “most at risk worldwide” and third “most exposed worldwide” to natural disasters, by the 2014 World Risk Report. The immediate consequences of disaster events such as Yolanda are dire and they additionally undermine the long-term development prospects of affected communities. The 2015 Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction from the United Nations estimates that the Philippines loses an average $7.893 million annually as a result of multiple hazards, comprising 69 percent of social expenditure in the country.
In the aftermath of Yolanda, the Ateneo de Manila University, through the Ateneo School of Government, organized and sent volunteer lawyers and law students to Leyte and Samar to help in the Legal Mission implemented by the citizen organization IDEALS. Under my personal direction and enabled by the leadership of lawyer Pauline Caspellan, formerly of ASoG and now working on disaster risk reduction and management issues with the United Nations Development Programme, our lawyers and volunteers assisted typhoon survivors on legal issues such as identity, property problems, claims for benefits, etc.
ADMU has also been active in responding to disasters with its DREAM team mobilizing and coordinating relief efforts when major disasters occur.
As the designated representative of the academic community in the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, the university has been actively involved in the sunset review process of the Philippine Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Act of 2010. As we have consistently advocated in the past, ADMU has continue to push for the creation of a new and independent DRRM agency.
Just a few weeks ago, ADMU forged a collaborative partnership with the Department of Social Welfare and Development, Department of Science and Technology, and IBM Philippines to establish ReliefOps.ph, a decision support system for disaster preparedness and management response efforts.I am personally excited about this, having participated with two young PHDs, astrophysicist Reina Reyes and management expert Joline Uihcanco in the initial brainstorming for this system. As described in the ADMU press release during the signing of the partnership agreement between the collaborating institutions, ReliefOps.ph “is designed at providing data and analytics-based recommendations for the pre-positioning and allocation of relief supplies using a GIS-based decision support system for disaster preparedness and response”.
Going back to ASOG, we are excited to take our involvement in DRRM a step further through the partnership agreement it recently signed with the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. HHI is an interdisciplinary initiative across Harvard University focused on “developing evidence-based approaches to humanitarian assistance” and building resiliency more broadly.
One of the programs under HHI focuses on resilient communities, whose flagship project is the Philippine-focused DisasterNet. The objective of DisasterNet is to improve grassroots preparedness and response by leveraging educational and research programs at Harvard to advance the understanding of disasters and resiliency as well as improve the capacity of government, civil society, and private sector leaders in the country.
A key objective during the first year of the project, which is being implemented in partnership with ASOG, is to conduct a scoping of current interventions related to disaster preparedness and response in the Philippines, in order to identify the most value- adding entry points for the project. The project will be directed by Philip Dy, an ADMU alumnus who just returned from graduate studies at the Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University. Philip assisted me in writing this column.
A team from HHI visited the Philippines in September as part of the scoping, led by Dr. Vincenzo Bollettino, one of the principal investigators of the project. The visit gave the team an opportunity to meet with key stakeholders in the DRR field in the country, including visiting Albay and meeting its officials as well as attending the Senior Disaster Management Officials Forum, organized by Apec, in Iloilo.It also gave the team the opportunity to think hard about how it can best contribute to all the good work that is already being done in the country on promoting both DRR and CCA.
It has been two years since Yolanda, but we continue to feel its effects, not to mention being exposed to other strong weather disturbances since then, including the recent Typhoon Lando that devastated huge parts of the northern part of the country.
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