Baguio
City, the capital of Benguet Province, was
flagged a few years back by a World Wide Fund for Nature study as the most
vulnerable Philippine city to climate change and other socioeconomic threats.
Because of its dense population, topography, and largely ill-planned
urbanization, Baguio’s ability to adapt and respond to such risks was judged
inadequate. As part of a conscious effort to turn things around, the city held
its first ever city-wide earthquake drill in March. Following that, on April 6,
part of Baguio City’s academic community participated in a forum highlighting
the importance of building a multiple resilience system.
The policy research forum on Human Capital: Health, Education, and Building Resilience was held at the University of the Philippines, Baguio,
co-hosted by the Cordillera Studies Center (CSC) and state think thank
Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS).
Dr. Gilberto Llanto, PIDS
president, presented his paper on Risks,
Shocks, and Building Resilience: Philippines,
profiling the risk landscape faced by the country, the nature of
interconnectedness of risks, and the importance of creating a policy framework
for building resilience at every level of society.
According to Mr.
Llanto, risks do not occur in isolation but rather in a wide
network. As an example, Mr. Llanto cited the link between food and energy
crises. The trade-off of choosing to allocate resources to address the need for
renewable energy was the fatal spike in food prices.
Closer to home, Mr. Llanto
explained how the economic slowdown in China directly affects the growth of
commodity-exporting countries like the Philippines. China is one of the
Philippines’ largest exporting partners.
Similarly, while the recent
falling oil prices was met with elation from the Philippines’ transport sector,
it greatly affected the economic health of oil-exporting countries. In turn,
the oil-exporting countries, which also happened to host large contingents of
overseas Filipino workers, were forced to send back their foreign workers to
their remittance-dependent homes.
Apart from being
interconnected, risks are, by nature, also constantly evolving. Therefore,
managing and responding to them requires multiple resilient systems.
“The Philippines is
particularly challenged to build economic resilience because of its high risk
exposure and vulnerability, explained somewhat by its geographical location,”
said Mr. Llanto. “It is difficult to manage risks. But it is possible.”
A huge stumbling block in the
process of risk management is the dearth of policy-oriented research and the
absence of a resilience system. Although it has the National Disaster Risk
Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) in place, the country has yet to
paint a comprehensive picture of the country’s risk landscape, making it
difficult to build the appropriate response framework.
“You need good policy
interventions, and good policies rely on good research,” Mr. Llanto said.
He warned, “Exposure to bad
policies will exacerbate one’s vulnerability.”
Thus, dealing with risks is
not solely the job of policymakers or the NDRRMC. Communities have to work
together to figure out how to handle and manage the risks and shocks faced by
their community at the ground level.
In sum, the country has to
work together at every level to make resilience thinking a habit. A multiple
resilience system must be built and founded on sound research and analysis,
capable of identifying the wide array of vulnerabilities and adapting to the
ever-evolving nature of risks. (PIDS)
Comments
Post a Comment