We’re supposedly past doing emergency rescue and relief efforts for Yolanda’s victims. We now face the more difficult task of reconstruction and rehabilitation. But what is more important is that we rebuild for resiliency. That is what “building back better” means.
Resilience is generally defined as the capacity of a system—be it a city, organization, family, or even an individual—to experience an external shock, respond to it, and bounce back. It’s more than just disaster preparedness or emergency response. It’s not just about being tough in the face of adversity. Resilient systems reflect attributes that include flexibility, diversity, and transparency. Resilience planning considers the entire system, including infrastructure design, skills training and livelihood, community development, and ecological integrity, along with reconstruction. Ultimately, resilience relies heavily on trust and social ties—things that the Filipino bayanihan spirit supports.
At its core, resilience planning acknowledges that there will be more “shocks” to the system, and it aims to design communities and cities such that they have the capacity to respond and adapt. While there is no direct link between climate change and storms like Yolanda, it is reasonable to assume that storm intensity will increase. One example of the growing interest in resilience is The Rockefeller Foundation’s Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network, which “aims to catalyze attention, funding, and action on building climate change resilience for poor and vulnerable people.” Rockefeller announced the first batch of cities as part of its 100 Resilient Cities Centennial Challenge, which will support cities in developing resilience. Unfortunately, not one city in the Philippines is participating in this first round. It is interesting to note that while cities in third world countries are included, such as Semarang, Indonesia, Surat, India, Quito, Ecuador, Porto Alegre, Brazil, Mandalay, Myanmar, and Da Nang, Vietnam, vulnerable cities in developed countries such as ChristChurch, New Zealand, and San Francisco, New York City and New Orleans, US were also included.
Yolanda left a tragedy in its wake, and we will need to rebuild. But the greater tragedy would be if we do not learn, adapt, and rebuild with resilience in mind. We owe the victims of Yolanda as much. This is what faces rehabilitation czar, Sen. Panfilo Lacson.
The first question is rebuild where? Questions were raised against rebuilding near the coastlines. Abandoning the sites for a public beach park means erasing private titles to the properties. That will take political will as the owners will object unless properly compensated or relocated on higher ground. But it is a good opportunity to re-design villages with resilient houses.
Combining local knowledge with technical expertise
An Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network (ACCCRN) study compared the effectiveness of approaches to self-built and donor-built housing following natural disasters in Hue and Da Nang. “It found that the most climate-resilient houses were built by families whose accumulated local knowledge from past storms was combined with donor technical support. The researchers recommend that builders, architects and engineers work with low-income households to develop housing that integrates local (indigenous) knowledge and needs with the professionals’ new (innovative) knowledge of safe technologies.” It means consulting the beneficiaries at the grassroots level and involving affected communities in recovery planning.
But resilient infrastructure, such as housing, is not the only way we can limit the impact of storms and sea surges. The study showed that soft infrastructure—in the form of mangrove forests that form a coastal barrier—can also provide effective protection. “Mangroves also provide important tangible and intangible benefits—from physical protection to improved fish supplies and other livelihood opportunities. Mangroves also limit climate change by storing carbon in their wood and soil. The study’s cost-benefit analysis suggests that the benefits of mangrove reforestation exceed those of continued aquaculture development.”
Local government, civil society organizations and the private sector
The publicized altercation between Secretary Mar Roxas and Tacloban Mayor Alfredo Romualdez was unfortunate. It happened when all hands were needed on deck. It is, however, heartening that along with private companies, it was the ordinary people that rose to the occasion.
Three civic groups immediately came to mind: The first and most visible among them was OplanHatid whose volunteers met the evacuees from Leyte aboard the C130 that landed on Villamor Airbase. The volunteers took them in their vehicles and searched for relatives whose exact addresses could not be provided by the still dazed evacuees. OplanHatid subsequently morphed into OplanTrabaho that organized a job fair participated by hundreds of employers in Luneta.
The second was TaoPhilippines which served mostly foreign tourists who do island hop tours on small boats from Coron to El Nido, Palawan. It was their former client/guests from all over the world who contacted them to deliver food and aid donations to the poor islanders they had visited. Using the same boat that ferried tourists, TaoPhilippines was the first to reach the small islands which were on Yolanda’s path.
And third was the Negrense for Better Philippines which launched the Peter Project that donated fishing boats to fishermen whose livelihood was lost. Other groups had since replicated the project in other areas.
No doubt that in times of calamity, civic organizations and private individuals are among the first responders. They can be counted upon in rescue-and-relief operations. But there is no reason why government should not harness them in the reconstruction and rehabilitation of their livelihood. Gawad Kalinga’s and Habitat’s expertise and experience in building hundreds of thousands of homes in more than a thousand communities for the poor can complement NHA in the yeoman’s task of rebuilding communities. Similarly, the Center for Agriculture and Rural Development (CARD), which has extended microfinance services to about a million families, can be tapped to help the victims help themselves. They cannot forever be on dole.
CCT and the former Philippine Refugee Processing Center (PRPC)
The Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program, which has not been lacking in critics for its perceived dole-out program, can rise to the occasion. I am sure Secretary Dinky Soliman has seen the opportunity to cast CCT’s wide net to include all the victims of Yolanda in the Visayas. It would be inclusion error-free since there is no doubt that the victims are now among the poorest of the poor. Still, in addition to fulfilling the conditions, they should put in labor in building their houses and/or in planting mangroves, or replanting coconut trees. Again, the principle of helping them help themselves.
Secondly, Secretary Soliman can take a look at the former PRPC in Morong Bataan, now the Bataan Technology Park Inc. (BTPI), which had served as a center in processing 460,000 Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian refugees from 1980 to 2004. It still has the former quarters within its 365 hectares confine. With some repair, they are better temporary quarters for our own refugees (yes, they are economic refugees) than the tent city in Pasay, and the land where they can plant vegetables, and sea where they can fish, are more hospitable than the concrete jungles of Metro Manila where human traffickers prowl for poor hapless victims.
Yes, the question asked by Morong residents is “if we had offered it to help foreign refugees, why can’t we use it for our own refugees?”
Finally, consider that this single storm Yolanda has affected over 14 million people in the Visayas and cost the Philippine economy an estimated P600 billion. What if another super typhoon comes, further straining the government’s resources? What if the next storm strikes Metro Manila—home to almost 1/5 of all Filipinos, the seat of our government, and ranked as the second most vulnerable city in the world to climate change? The devastation left in Yolanda’s wake is a stark reminder that Filipinos must be thinking beyond relief, and even beyond rebuilding, to resilience.
(This article reflects the personal opinion of the author and does not reflect the official stand of the Management Association of the Philippines. The author was a three-term congressman of the First District of Bataan. He was also Chair and Administrator of the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority and subsequently, Chair of the Bases Conversion Development Authority until he ran for congressman in the last election. He is currently Chair of the Board of Trustees of the University of Nueva Caceres. Feedback at <mapsecretariat@gmail.com> and <fcpayumo@gmail.com>. For previous articles, please visit www.map.org.ph)