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Building Back Better After Disasters: Enhancing Community Resilience Through In-City Resettlement in Valenzuela City, Philippines

• Volume 5, Issue 2, September 2023

How can local governments build the resilience of disaster-affected households? This is an important concern since climate change is expected to worsen climate-related disasters especially among vulnerable sectors such as the urban poor in developing countries. For the Philippines, the most at-risk country in the World Risk Index 2022, it is important to address the vulnerability of the urban poor living in danger zones.

Climate Change and Civil-Military Coordination in the Philippines: How climate change disasters will impact aid delivery in areas affected by conflict

• Volume 5, Issue 1, March 2022

Bringing aid to disaster-stricken communities is complex, especially in the Philippines where destructive typhoons are intensifying due to climate change. This paper illustrates the coordination for humanitarian aid from Philippine government instrumentalities, the military, uniformed personnel, and civilian sectors as well as from, multilateral organizations and non-government organizations, both local and international during state of national calamities like Typhoon Haiyan. Disaster response increases in complexity in conflict zones such as Bangsamoro Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), where armed non-state actors have been active for many years. Encapsulated are the perceptions of 30 respondents coming from government agencies involved in disaster risk reduction and management, including the military and uniformed personnel including humanitarian and relief agencies, during both peacetime and conflict. This embodies challenges in civil-military engagement in balancing mandated tasks such as security, maintaining peace and order, preserving sovereignty, and preventing terrorism with adherence to humanitarian principles and frameworks even while striving to deliver basic humanitarian services in the nexus of climate change and conflict.

Flood Disaster Risk, Sense of Place, and Preparedness of Entrepreneurs in Communities along a River

• Volume 5, Issue 1, November 2021

Restarting business after river floods

The impacts of river floods on small and medium-scale enterprises are significantly felt in the damage and losses experienced by owners and managers who are already saddled with keeping going their businesses related to food, industry, and farm. Such depressing experiences, evident likewise on their flood disaster risk perceptions, should have reduced the value of the place of their business operations or entrepreneurial activities. But they insisted on remaining and rebuilding after disastrous floods rather than stopping or relocating away from hazards. Interestingly, this survey of a non-probability sample of 36 enterprise owners and managers along the Ocoy River in Negros Oriental, Philippines, revealed that flood disaster risk perception is positively and significantly related to their sense of place. Incidentally, they had a low disaster preparedness, although not significantly associated with these two variables, suggesting the high value they assigned to their communities despite a high flood risk. Only place dependence as an economic component of the sense of place was positively and significantly related to flood disaster preparedness which explains their reluctance to relocate. Therefore, as part of enterprises; formal requirements for a business permit, the entrepreneurs must undergo flood disaster preparedness orientation to adapt to climate change.

Philippine Institutions and Complex Institutional arrangements for Climate Change Adaptation in Agriculture

• Volume 4, Issue 1, January 2021

The Philippines is one of the countries highly vulnerable to climate change, and this condition threatens further the meager agricultural production in the country. However, while the Philippines has established the institutional foundations linking climate change to agriculture, through policies and legislation, advances in climate change adaptation have been slow, especially at the local level. This paper demonstrated that this gap in policy formulation and actual implementation stems from the lack of institutional analysis in CCA efforts in the Philippines. The paper concludes that along with the scientific and technological discussions, institutional conversations should be among the initial vital steps in CCA planning, and policy and decision-making. It further advocates that institutional analysis can be the entry point for designing reforms toward effective CCA implementation.

Adaptive capacity of local communities to flash floods and landslides: Comparison of indigenous and non-indigenous people in Eastern Mindanao

• Volume 3, Issue 1, December 2018

Only few studies investigated the adaptive capacity or adaptation practices of indigenous peoples (IPs) in the Philippines and none so far in the Compostela Valley. Since the landslide and flash flood events in 2012 brought by Typhoon Bopha, no systematic study has been conducted to compare the adaptive capacity of IPs and non-IPs in New Bataan’s most affected communities. This paper contributes to the assessments of adaptive behavior with the ultimate goal of stimulating adaptation support to the most vulnerable people.

Adaptive Capacity of Indigenous Peoples to Changing Climate: The case of the Aytas of Floridablanca, Pampanga, Philippines

• Volume 2, Issue 2, July 2017

The livelihoods of Aytas of Floridablanca, Pampanga, Philippines are dependent on natural resources, which are prone to climate change impacts. To assess their adaptive capacity, this paper analyzed the different resources available in their community using the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach Framework. 

The Role of Traditional Ecological Knowledge in the Disaster Risk Management Strategies of Island Communities in Cat Hai, Vietnam

• Volume 2, Issue 2, July 2017

The very real threat of climate change requires effective disaster risk management (DRM), especially in highly vulnerable ecosystems such as island communities. Past disaster experiences in different parts of the world have revealed the importance of integrating traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) with scientific fndings in managing disaster risk.

Adaptability of the mental models approach to the development of risk communication messages on climate change for rice farmers in Pangasinan Province, Philippines

• Volume 2, Issue 1, November 2016

The mental models approach has been put forward as a method for investigating laypeople’s knowledge, beliefs, and perception as precursor to the development of risk communication messages and strategies. Using means-ends analysis, the paper assessed the adaptability of the mental models approach to the development of risk communication messages on climate change for rice farmers in a village in the province of Pangasinan.

Toward developing a humanitarian crowdsourcing model: Enabling medical and disaster response through digital collaboration

• Volume 2, Issue 1, November 2016

Lately, the humanitarian community has been utilizing crowdsourcing to facilitate medical and disaster response. Grounded in Geiger et al.’s (2011) Crowdsourcing Information Systems (CIS) and Suroweicki’s (2004) Wisdom of the Crowds (WC), this study content-analyzed 23 humanitarian crowdsourcing websites to find out how crowdsourcing has enabled medical and disaster response, as evident in global humanitarian movements from 2010 to 2014.

Perceptions of Typhoon Haiyan affected communities about the resilience and storm protection function of mangrove ecosystems in Leyte and Eastern Samar, Philippines

• Volume 1, Issue 1, December 2015

The destruction caused by Typhoon Haiyan in the coastal areas of central Philippines drew greater international attention to the vulnerability of coastal communities to extreme weather and climate events. Mangrove ecosystems enhance coastal resilience by acting as barriers against storms and its impacts.