The Office of the Civil Defense and the National Risk Reduction and Management Council are keen on intensifying efforts to improve the national government’s policies and programs to effectively address the country’s vulnerability to natural hazards and calamities.
NDRRMC spokesperson and OCD Assistant Secretary Raffy Alejandro said the government is pursuing the institutionalization of the Disaster Risk Reduction Management Program that will be implemented in all levels of the local government units including in regional, provincial, and municipalities nationwide.
“Because of the extreme effects of climate change, we need to adapt new technologies or systems that would really enhance our country’s disaster response and risk management capability,” Alejandro said.
He said that there is a need to integrate the master plans on hazards and risk reduction into the local planning as well as to further improve the risk-informed planning at the local levels.
“When we do local planning, the land used must be integrated to the hazards and other elements on risk reduction in coming up with our local plans,” Alejandro said.
He added that the OCD continues to provide capacity-building efforts to the national, provincial, and local officials “to better address risk reduction and disaster response.”
Meanwhile, Alejandro said that as the Philippines is considered a hazard-prone country, preparedness against possible hazards brought by natural calamities and disasters must be improved and people must adapt to the current climate situation.
“The Philippines is really in the heart of every disaster, our country is a hazard-prone area. Our population is increasing and with that — our capacity to respond, to conduct resilient disaster management program should be evolving and need to be adaptive,” Alejandro said, referring to the result of the WorldRiskIndex report 2022.