Disaster Preparedness in the Philippines: From the Will to the Way

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.