City’s vulnerability reduction plan, laid out
BAGUIO CITY – (17 February 2021) – Believing in the dictum, “failing to prepare is preparing to fail”, the City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office (CDRRMO) presented the city’s Vulnerability Reduction Strategic Plan in Tuesday’s management committee meeting of local officials at Baguio Convention Center led by Mayor Benjamin Magalong.
Cyr Bagayao, Local DRRM Officer 2, said the plan is composed of four thematic areas: Prevention and mitigation; preparedness; response; rehabilitation and recovery.
These areas, he said, mutually reinforce each other and inter-operable; are problem-needs and assets-strength centered; do not, should not, and cannot stand alone; and aimed at reducing people’s vulnerabilities and increasing their capacities.
“These priority areas are not autonomous from the other nor do they have clear start and end points. They are not seen as a mere cycle which starts in prevention and mitigation and ends in rehabilitation and recovery,” Bagayao said.
He laid out the various objectives, goals, outcomes and activities targeted for each priority area and the implementation strategies for their achievement.
These strategies are: Advocacy and information, education and communication; contingency planning; competency-based capability building; mainstreaming of DRRM and Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) in all plans.
Education on DRRM and CCA for all; rationalization; research and knowledge management; networking; monitoring, evaluation and learning; roadmap and scorecard development, are also included.
As to resource mobilization at the national and local levels, Bagayao said the following funding sources can be tapped: General Appropriations Act; National DRRM Fund; Local DRRM Fund; Priority Development Assistance Fund; donor funds; adaptation and risk financing; and Disaster Management Assistance Fund.
He said the Local DRRM Plan will also tap into non-monetary resources available that can help in the attainment of its identified targets.
These sources are: Community-based good practices for replication and scaling-up; DRRM indigenous practices; public-private partnerships; and tapping DRR and CCA networks of key stakeholders. – Gaby B. Keith
