Safe and adequate shelter is an important factor an affected community needs to recover from a disaster.
In 2013, Typhoon Haiyan wiped out homes across Barangay Macaalang in the municipality of Dagami, Leyte. Many of these houses were far from sturdy and did not stand a chance against Haiyan. But through the collective action of community members, and CARE and ACCORD’s
program equipping the community with the necessary knowledge and skills to build back better and safer, Barangay Macaalang was able to rebuild in no time.
“ACCORD advised us to group together to make the rebuilding easier. If we do it individually, it will take a long time,” says Helena Olimpo, barangay councilor. The community received shelter assistance and materials. Apart from learning about how to build back safer, they also participated in other capacity building activities such as understanding hazards and disaster risk reduction, inclusion, and community drills based on their revised contingency plan.
The “Post-Haiyan Self-Recovery Housing Program” in Leyte, Iloilo, and Aklan was one of the winners of the 2017 World Habitat Awards.
The Philippines holds valuable lessons in the merging, unique practice of Integrated Risk Management (IRM) in the urban context. The MANATUTI River Basin, which is one of the primary focuses of the Partners for Resilience (PfR) project, is located in the highly urbanized National Capital Region, specifically in Quezon City, Caloocan, Malabon, Navotas, and Valenzuela (QC-CAMANAVA). The multiple jurisdictions governing the landscape and the complexity of intermingling factors present in the urban context provide a challenging arena for the practice.
The first four targets of the Sendai framework for action directly focus on the decrease of diaster mortality, affected people, economic loss, and damage to critical facilities and services. Meeting the targets is a huge task for highly-urbanized landscapes, where larger, more concentrated populations, investments, and critical facilities are exposed to higher risks. This makes all the more imperative to perfect the practice of urban IRM.
To read more about constructing IRM in urban ecosystems, click the link below to view and download the document.
Click here to view and download the complete IRM and its Complex Cities document.
This document contains a compilation of key messages about Integrated Risk Management (IRM). It also includes a discussion of the resilience strengthening roles of local government units (LGUs), civil society, and community participation in IRM.
Among the cases featured are integrated solutions for Lake Manit, IRM for complex cities, nature-based solutions to coastal zone protection in the City of Tacloban and the Municipality of Palo, and the resilience of communities in Barangay Bayabas in Dagami, Leyte after the damage brought about by Typhoon Haiyan.
Read more about these stories by clicking on the link to the full document below.
View and Download Key Messages and Case Studies on Integrated Risk Management here.
Manila Bay is strategically located and used to facilitate commerce and trade with other neighboring countries. In its heyday, the bay was known for clean and blue water where people could fish and children could play along the shore. It also used to be filled with mangroves, thus capable of protecting the shore from big waves. Today, however, Manila Bay has become quite the opposite as it is mostly known for intense pollution and unsanitary water.
Due to the increasing population, many of the urban poor communities live in or near the coastal areas. Because these vulnerable populations have limited resources, many people cram into these areas and result to high-risk living conditions with the general housing of community made of only lightweight materials.
The Malabon-Navotas-Tullahan-Tinajeros or MANATUTI River System is one of the three river groups draining into Manila Bay. MANTUTI has been classified as a dead river and can no longer sustain forms of life which affect the quality of life of the fisherfolk near these bodies of water. They have to travel to distant waters in order to catch fish, hence increasing their expenses and reducing income. Aside from this, the communities who reside in areas, such as those by Manila Bay or its comprising river systems (usually informal settlers) are most prone to flooding, fire, storm surges, liquefactions, and earthquakes which are expected to be intensified in the next five to ten years due to climate change.
The Manila Bay Rehabilitation Program is simultaneously ongoing with the Manila Bay Sustainable Development Master Plan which is a joint effort of the Philippine government and the Netherlands Government. The latter serves as more of a guide on how future plans for Manila Bay will be carried out, however it is a mere guide that does not have the teeth to enforce its provisions. This is where Partners for Resilience (PfR) steps in. PfR aims to harmonize the process of planning, particularly since one main challenge of large areas such as Manila is that there are simply too many plans.
In Voices of Manila Bay, resilience-building efforts for not only the local government unit officials, but also of the community members themselves through joint and inclusive initiatives and platforms are featured. Through PfR, people from these communities, as well as members of the local government were given an opportunity to create consultations and discussions about their natural environment, their surroundings, their vulnerabilities, and their capacities in order to form a stronger mindset and clearer perspective on the situation. Eventually, this was able to inform the plans and decisions they made for community resilience.
Without PfR, many of the small but most vulnerable communities would not have any idea that there is an ongoing planning and development process for Manila Bay. Therefore, they would not have a chance to share their grievances, inputs, and aspirations about what they want for Manila Bay as the most affected population.
As a whole, this film aims to encourage a dialogue around the participation of communities and local stakeholders in large infrastructure development projects.
To see the full film, please watch the video below.
With each passing year, the frequency and severity of natural hazards is increasing. Coupled with a changing climate and severe environmental degradation, the disaster risks faced by communities living in extremely vulnerable conditions are only magnified.
In 2011, a five-year program, Partners for Resilience (PfR), funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs was conceptualized. The project aimed at reducing the impact of natural hazards on the livelihoods of around 400,000 vulnerable people in Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Mali, Indonesia, India, the Philippines, Nicaragua, and Guatemala.
The implementation of PfR was undertaken by a consortium of five partners, namely Netherlands Red Cross (lead agency), CARE Nederlands, Cordaid, Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Center, and Wetlands International. It is the fundamental belief of the five partners that resilience plays an essential role in dealing effectively with disasters.
Partners for Resilience used an integrated approach to mitigate disaster risks and enhance livelihoods, particularly by addressing climate change and ecosystem management and restoration.
In this PfR video, vulnerable communities in the provinces of Bihar and Odisha, India were engaged through improving the management of natural capital and diversifying livelihood options or building livelihood resilience by introducing communities to flood resilient technologies for agriculture and diversified livelihood opportunities including mushroom cultivation, pisciculture, and the formation of Self-Help Groups.
PfR also increases disaster preparedness by being actively involved with the government in formulating district-level disaster management plans in which ecosystem and climate change approaches are incorporated in order to not only foster the people’s resilience, but also to the build capacities of the community and the district. Other undertakings of the PfR program such as Village-Level Risk Reduction Plans and Village-Level Disaster Reduction Committees (VLDRCs) are also featured in this video.
Disasters cause substantial losses not only in lives but also in livelihoods. Chronic disasters cause the adverse impacts of these losses to accumulate by not allowing affected households to rebuild their livelihoods and recover. The accumulated negative impacts of recurring disasters on household livelihoods have long-term effects, reinforcing intergenerational transmission of poverty and pushing poor households further into greater vulnerability.
Years of work on reducing disaster risks among high-risk communities in the Philippines are bearing fruit in terms of saving lives. Equal attention must be given to saving livelihoods in order to achieve household and community resilience. This study documents the various experiences of households and communities that, sustaining serious losses particularly from the Bopha disaster in 2012 and Haiyan in 2013, have emerged successful in adopting strategies that would protect their livelihood assets and capacities from anticipated recurring disasters. From the lessons and good practices, in the context of
largely rural and agricultural communities, the strategies in achieving resilience in livelihoods are identified.
View and download the material here.
Integrated Risk Management (IRM) is an enhanced, holistic approach to increasing community resilience by integrating disaster risk reduction (DRR), climate change adaptation (CCA) and ecosystem management and restoration (EMR).