Local executives urged to have disaster risk reduction tools in land use

Manila, Philippines - Senate committee on climate change chair Loren Legarda reiterated her call for all local government units to integrate disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA) tools in their respective land use and development plans as part of continuous preparations for storms and other calamities during the rainy season.

Citing the United Nations’ 2011 Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction, Legarda noted that more people are now protected from disasters globally but economic losses as a result of these disasters have also risen.

“The risk of being killed by a cyclone or flood is lower today than it was 20 years ago. However, economic losses due to disasters continue to be in an upward trend and seriously threaten the economies of low-income countries,” Legarda said.

“In the Philippines, over the last 30 years, the number of disaster events have increased three times, the reported number of deaths have decreased slightly and the number of affected population staying the same, but alarmingly, the economic losses increased drastically by more than 17 times,” she added.

Legarda said that while LGUs have improved disaster preparedness measures such as preemptive evacuation, a significant portion of its population and infrastructure are still located in hazard-prone areas, which she said was a clear manifestation of poorly managed urbanization.

According to Legarda, the Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board has indicated that many cities and municipalities still do not integrate DRR and CCA tools when they prepare their respective Comprehensive Land Use Plans or CLUPs.

“What they have done is merely to prepare simple hazard maps that delineate the use of land resource in their respective areas.”

Legarda said that there are still around 340 LGUs that have yet to update their CLUPs and that most of these are 3rd to 6th class municipalities, which have low income and high vulnerability to various types of disasters.

“For our LGUs, the authority and system of comprehensive land use planning provides the opportunity for the integration of DRR and CCA. With the advent of the Disaster Risk Reduction Management Act of 2010 and the Climate Change Act of 2009, the time and institutions are ripe for this kind of integration,” Legarda said.

“CLUPs may mention that a certain locality is flood-prone but there is no detailed exposure and vulnerability assessment. Information such as the severity, frequency and magnitude of previous damage and losses are crucial in identifying robust interventions in the LGU’s CLUP and development plans,” she added.

She said that the LGUs should immediately institutionalize DRR and CCA in the local planning process and that the National Economic and Development Authority and the Department of the Interior and Local Government, together with Office of Civil Defense and the Climate Change Commission should assist the LGUs in this process.