Funding legitimate concern in disaster risk management

By Marita Moaje, Philippine News Agency

Meanwhile, Loyzaga emphasized the importance of stakeholders’ engagement, particularly with the academe, the civil society organizations (CSO), and the private sector, which she believed had the resources to fill the financial gaps. (File Photo: Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR)/Facebook)

MANILA – Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Maria Antonia Yulo-Loyzaga on Thursday said funding is an extremely important concern that must be addressed amid efforts to strengthen disaster risk management.

At the closing press conference of the Asia-Pacific Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (APMCDRR) in Pasay City, Loyzaga and Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction and head of the UNDRR Kamal Kishore underscored the need for better funding to support the management of disaster risk reduction.

“This issue of financing will not go away. We need to address this head-on and for us in the developing countries in the Asia-Pacific, I think it’s extremely important to look at the profile of our development financing that we have available and to see that these in fact are risk-sensitive and are locally driven in terms of the way they have been engineered and structured,” Loyzaga said.

Kishore said that compared to the previous Asian Ministerial Conferences, the ongoing APMCDRR had opened conversations about funding disaster risk reduction management.

“This conversation encompasses financing from national budgets, financing from international sources, climate finance, private finance, and use of insurance instruments,” he said.

Among the issues discussed include the funding for preventive investments and disaster response, increased access to finance for people-centered and inclusive local resilience, enhancing the involvement of the private sector in disaster risk reduction financing, creating conditions for financing and investment for disaster and climate-resilient infrastructure, and data-driven decision-making for risk-informed development and financing.

Meanwhile, Loyzaga emphasized the importance of stakeholders’ engagement, particularly with the academe, the civil society organizations (CSO), and the private sector, which she believed had the resources to fill the financial gaps.

With the limited fiscal space that the Philippines has, she said the government needs all the help it can get to address the growing disaster risks.

Through the APMCDRR meeting, Loyzaga said Asia-Pacific countries should work beyond the potential synergies and take advantage of learnings gained.

“So the approach towards alignment of resources and accessing resources need to be more proactive in terms of the way we look at the international financing that we’ve been able to access, the way we are managing the lean resources that we have, and therefore the need for better science in order to prioritize where these resources should go,” Loyzaga said.