Sen. Legarda at APEC meeting include DRMM in economic plans

ILOILO CITY, Philippines – Philippine Senator Loren Legarda yesterday insisted for the integration of disaster risk reduction and management programs into any development programs and trade agreements among member economies of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation.

Legarda issued this statement, in her speech delivered in her behalf by Commissioner Emmanuel de Guzman of the Climate Change Commission, during the opening of the two-day 9th APEC Senior Disaster Management Officials Forum held at the Iloilo Convention Center in this city.

“If you are not prepared to address (disaster), then there is no trade agreement to speak of,” said the senator who underscored the importance of disaster risk reduction while acknowledging APEC’s output on trade investments and promotions.

Legarda said development problems have been examined with better approaches and solutions, but then these have been made more complicated as disasters, exacerbated by climate change, have been getting bigger and deadlier.

The past decade alone saw disasters incurring a staggering damage to 1.5 billion people in various ways, including over 700,00 people killed and 23 million more rendered homeless, said the senator, adding that the total economic loss had reached more than US$1.3 trillion.

“With these enormous ill-effects, did governments do enough to address the effects of climate change?” Legarda asked the more than a hundred APEC delegates during the forum.

Legarda then urged APEC members to “effectively incorporate disaster risk reduction in development agenda, strengthen inter-economy cooperation in dealing with disasters, and come up with an APEC framework for disaster risk reduction, similar to free trade agreements or trade facilitation agreements.

“Disasters know no boundaries or borders. As we make our respective economies resilient and sustainable, the whole region will benefit if we can support each other through strengthened collaborative research, technology transfer, capacity building and knowledge sharing,” she said.

“The people in this room have the power to influence our leaders to head towards a brighter future, a safer earth. Let us all become champions of change for the future that we want. Let us all become victors instead of victims in this only living planet that we call home,” Legarda said.

Citing the United Nations Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction 2015, she pointed to growing global inequality, increasing hazard exposure, rapid urbanization, and the overconsumption of energy and natural capital as major factors that would “drive risk to dangerous and unpredictable levels.”

Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin, chairman of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, also delivered a speech during the opening day of the forum, where he also cited the increasing complexities of disasters.

“The prevalence of disasters in the new normal has serious manifestations to our international economic relations as it cuts across several APEC concerns and priorities,” said Gazmin, adding that these also causes major disruptions to trade relations, business and investments in the Asia-Pacific Region.