During Monday’s launching of the Asia-Pacific Ministerial Conference of Disaster Risk Reduction, Kamal Kishore, chief of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), praised the Philippines for being “a very unique, very inspiring host” for the event.
“Your approach is marked by a people-centered focus – talking about what really needs to happen on the ground. How people experience the effects of disaster risk reduction,” said Kishore, also a special representative of the UN secretary general for disaster risk reduction.
He also noted the country’s “really vibrant civil society,” which he said was “really inspiring and other countries might like to draw on [it].”
Kishore further praised the Philippines on how it “brings different parts of the government together,” adding that “this is not something that you see in many different countries.”
He said he can’t think of a better place to organize the event, especially with the completion of the Sendai Framework in five years, referring to a 2015 agreement among UN member states following a conference in the Japanese city of Sendai which targets a “substantial reduction of disaster risks and losses in lives, livelihoods, and health.”
As a country that is among the most vulnerable to natural disasters on the planet, the Philippines is indeed a fitting host for a conference on disaster risk reduction. Our varied experiences with super typhoons, floods, volcanic eruptions, and even earthquakes, ensure that we have a wealth of knowledge to share, as well as still being open to learn from others.
Our unfortunate yet regular experience with natural disasters, and familiarity with how our government and communities respond, may have led us to think that there is so much that can be improved upon. However, we may have overlooked that there are also things that we are doing right, which other countries can learn from.
Hopefully such conferences allow us to not only learn from our peers, and share the knowledge we have gained from our experiences, but also help us appreciate the advantages we have gained from our vast experience of being among the most disaster-struck nations on the planet.*
