PH urged to shift spending to disaster prevention

While the Philippines has been lauded for having one of the region’s most advanced disaster risk financing (DRF) systems, a global organization said more focus was needed on prevention rather than postdisaster spending.

In a report, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) noted that despite the country’s multilayered DRF framework—which includes national contingency funds, quick response funds, catastrophe bonds, local risk pools and microinsurance—most resources are still channeled toward emergency response and rehabilitation.

It also added that the Local Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Funds (LDRRMF) and the People’s Survival Fund play key roles in the country’s DRF, with the LDRRMF requiring local governments to allocate 5 percent of their budgets for disaster risk reduction.

However, the OECD said LDRRMF had largely funded postdisaster response and recovery, while preventive measures have received only a limited share.

“It is highlighted that disaster funds at both national and local levels have mostly been used to support emergency response, recovery, and rehabilitation, at the detriment of risk prevention,” the OECD said in its Economic Outlook on Enhancing Disaster Risk Financing.

In the last quarter of the year, the Philippines was hit by back-to-back typhoons and major earthquakes, leaving millions affected and straining disaster response systems.

The government, while scrambling to provide billions of pesos of relief, also had to grapple with the flood control scandal.

As it is, these disasters revealed how vulnerable communities remain, even with established disaster funds.

“Strengthening local government units’ capacity and improving the monitoring of preventive spending, along with better connecting local financing with planning frameworks, is critical to moving from reactive to preventive disaster risk finance,” the OECD said.

Among the other challenges facing the country are capacity constraints, uneven technical expertise and fragmented legal and institutional frameworks.