Conference pitches investment in disaster readiness

Senator Loren Legarda on Thursday, 30 April led calls for disaster readiness financing even as financial leaders assured access to such funding during a climate change resiliency conference at the Asian Institute of Management.

“We have become experts in counting the dead and repairing the broken, but we have not yet mastered the art of anticipating the blow,” Legarda said at the Asian Conference on Climate Change and Disaster Resilience (ACCCDR) 2026.

Model of conditional early action

“I propose that we move towards a model of conditional early action. This means repositioning funds and resources in the accounts of local governments, not just for rebuilding schools, but for retrofitting them. Not just for buying coffins, but for buying early warning systems and portable food reserves,” the four-term senator said as she revealed plans to legislate for anticipation.

“We need a budget amendment that allows the Department of Budget and Management to disperse disaster funds based on a forecast, not just a declaration of a state of calamity,” she added, stressing that fiscal policy is meaningless if it does not reach the mother packing her children into a tricycle or a jeep to flee a flooding home.

“We must simplify the trigger mechanisms for local aid. If Pagasa predicts a storm surge of a certain height or magnitude, the cash transfer should be automatic,” said Legarda.

Available funds

Department of Finance director John Adrian M. Narag, in a panel discussion on scaling anticipatory climate financing, informed that funds are readily available for local government units, including the annual local government support fund from the Department of Budget and Management and the People’s Survival Fund, a law authored by Legarda intended for adaptation projects for vulnerable communities.

Narag also said there are also international funds committed by developed nations such as the Adaptation Fund and Loss and Damage Fund.

Meanwhile, Radu Tatucu, senior financial sector specialist and financial sector lead at the World Bank, said the WB is working with the Department of Agriculture, Philippine Crop Insurance Corp., private insurance companies and Land Bank of the Philippines in setting up a co-insurance pool to scale up insurance coverage to non-subsistence farmers.

Tatucu said the intention of the project is to increase the number of local farmers being covered by insurance in one crop season from 5,000 to half a million.

The Asian Institute of Management (AIM) convened policymakers, finance ministers, private sector innovators and local government executives for the ACCCDR 2026, united by a shared imperative to ensure that climate finance reaches frontline communities before the next disaster hit.

Anchored on the theme “From Risk to Readiness: Investing in Climate Futures in Asia,” the conference reframed climate preparedness as more than a humanitarian issue, positioning resilience as an urgent economic, governance and national security priority.

The ACCCDR 2026 reinforced the Institute’s role as a convening force for transformative dialogue where leadership, policy and sustainable development meet. By bringing together voices from government, multilateral finance and the private sector, AIM continues to advance its mission of developing principled leaders shaping solutions to Asia’s most pressing challenges.