Good morning po sa ating lahat. We are honored to have with us today Her Excellency Mami Mizutori, Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary General for Disaster Risk Reduction and Head of the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction as well.

We are pleased to welcome her team Mr. Marco Toscano-Rivalta, chief of the UNDRR Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific.

Good morning as well to our very good friend and partner Vice Admiral Alexander Pama of ARISE Phils., and of course Asst. Sec. Bernardo Alejandro, Raffy, of the Office of Civil Defense.

Sly Barrameda, the Executive Director of NRC, and all our colleagues and friends that we see here this morning. Thank you very much for being a part of this day.
Most especially, I’d like to thank our local government officials. They are the frontlines of our disaster risk reduction work and they deserve to be recognized for their important contributions to disaster resilience and sustainable development.

This event coincides with the 32nd anniversary of the enactment of the Local Government Code of the Philippines which recognizes local government units and our barangays. Although the smallest administrative unit in the country, they are indeed the most important in terms of disaster risk reduction. All disaster risk is local while the impacts would cascade globally.

Under Republic Act 10121, barangays are responsible for “setting the direction, development, implementation and coordination of disaster risk management programs within respective territorial jurisdiction.” As the first line of defense, barangays also serve as the primary platform for outcomes in the vision of securing community resilience as stated in the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Plan and the National Framework Strategy on Climate Change. Resilience targets of the Strategy Framework of the Philippine Development Plan also depends on our barangays and other local government officials.

Resilience may appear and manifest differently in each and every barangay and community. But the theme of this year’s IDDRR, “Fighting inequality for a resilient future,” resounds very much and is part of the local development agenda. It highlights the reciprocal relationship between inequality and disaster vulnerability. Unfortunately, barangays that are most vulnerable to extreme events and multiple hazards are also most likely to be underinvested in, and this puts them more at risk.
We would like to have a shared understanding of risk and resilience so that we can better frame our strategies, programs, and investments. This forum aims to do just that. We would like to hear the perspective from the frontlines and engage in discussions and constructive discourse with different experts and practitioners who are actually engaged in this form of disaster resilience assistance as well. This is an opportunity to listen and learn and invest in our education, as well as possibly in the future training, and capacity building for our local leaders but also for our national leaders to listen from the voices from the ground.

Good risk governance is important because we know that disasters can indeed wipe away any progress we may have heard in our own communities. When Secretary Rex Gatchalian comes later, he will possibly discuss what the impact of disasters are on not just the poor but the near poor who inevitable will also be affected by the impact of multiple hazards. Effective leadership and people-centered governance are important to achieve our goals and deliver quality service to our stakeholders, our constituents and our communities themselves. Let’s not forget the environment. Without a sustainable ecosystem with a certain level of integrity in its function, our communities cannot in fact deliver the goals of resilience that they now are choosing to target.

I understand how challenging it is to get people to support a cause and do the right thing. Disaster resilience has no natural constituency. We need to build it and we need to grow it. We hope, from the DENR, that we can offer support to all our communities and barangays in terms of their evidence-informed programs at the local level.

Local governments need to be engaged in the crafting of context-specific and responsive policies, programs and actions that put people and the environment that sustains them, first. We need to adopt a comprehensive risk management strategy, centered on prevention, rather than on relief and response.

On behalf of the DENR and the organizing partners, we welcome and really value the leadership that you have shown just by being present here today. This forum is a manifestation of our commitment to working inclusively in a multistakeholder fashion towards disaster resilience.

The President has said that the preservation of the environment is the preservation of life. The task of building resilience and preserving life is not just the government’s alone. But we all have a role to play as being part of that government to ensure the quality of life for generations to come.

Our investments in prevention and preparedness, not for response, but preparedness to avoid a disaster would really change the landscape for all of our barangays. We must look beyond our fence lines, though. Barangays are just part of a local government unit which in turn are part of regions and provinces as well. So we need to be able to re-align and align our paths to progress and resilience so that they in fact, feed into each other and result in multiple positive outcomes.

We hope the discussions today will provide everyone with more insights into the changes, the challenges, and the opportunities that we can all face together and shed some light on the good work that you also have in your respective local government units.

Thank you very much for your support and participation today. Let’s work together for more resilient, inclusive, and sustainable future for the Philippines.

Maraming salamat, po.###