Introduction: The Philippines is one of the top countries in the world at risk of climate-related disasters. For populations subsisting at the poverty line in particular, but also the nation as a whole, daily lives and wellbeing are routinely challenged. The Philippines government takes disaster risk seriously and has devoted significant resources to build disaster capacity and reduce population exposure and vulnerability, nationally and locally. This paper explores the policy and institutional mechanisms for disaster risk reduction management and research which have been conducted in the Philippines related to disaster preparedness, management and resilience. Methods: This study draws on direct observations of and conversations with disaster management professionals, in addition to a review of the extant literature on resilience and disaster preparedness, in the Philippines. This is a descriptive study based on a search of mainly peer-reviewed studies but also articles, reports, and disaster risk reduction and response projects in the Philippines. Search words used in various combinations included: Resilience, Philippines, Disaster Preparedness, Community-based, Disaster Risk Reduction, Capacity-building. Results: Numerous activities in community based resilience and DRR have been identified across the whole disaster continuum. Yet, important gaps in research and practice remain. Discussion: The Philippines, is a leading regional actor in disaster risk management. However, a full picture of who is doing what, how, where and when on resilience and disaster preparedness does not exist. Consequently there is no single study that compares the impacts and results that different preparedness measures are having in the Philippines. We recommend further research focussed on mapping the network of actors, understanding community perceptions of disaster risk preparedness and resilience, and investigation into the socio-ecological systems of different communities.
In recent years, the notion of resilience has grown into an important concept for both scholars and practitioners working on disasters. This evolution reflects a growing interest from diverse disciplines in a holistic understanding of complex systems, including how societies interact with their environment. This new lens offers an opportunity to focus on communities’ ability to prepare for and adapt to the challenges posed by natural hazards, and the mechanism they have developed to cope and adapt to threats. This is important because repeated stresses and shocks still cause serious damages to communities across the world, despite efforts to better prepare for disasters. Scholars from a variety of disciplines have developed resilience frameworks both to guide macro-level policy decisions about where to invest in preparedness and to measure which systems perform best in limiting losses from disasters and ensuring rapid recovery. Yet there are competing conceptions of what resilience encompasses and how best to measure it. While there is a significant amount of scholarship produced on resilience, the lack of a shared understanding of its conceptual boundaries and means of measurement make it difficult to demonstrate the results or impact of resilience programs. If resilience is to emerge as a concept capable of aiding decision-makers in identifying socio-geographical areas of vulnerability and improving preparedness, then scholars and practitioners need to adopt a common lexicon on the different elements of the concept and harmonize understandings of the relationships amongst them and means of measuring them. This article reviews the origins and evolution of resilience as an interdisciplinary, conceptual umbrella term for efforts by different disciplines to tackle complex problems arising from more frequent natural disasters. It concludes that resilience is a useful concept for bridging different academic disciplines focused on this complex problem set, while acknowledging that specific measures of resilience will differ as different units and levels of analysis are employed to measure disparate research questions.
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