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.