, Jeayan Krish

-A
October 23, 2020
Know Disaster, No Disaster - Disaster and Governance: Two-piece in a pod. 
Disaster are becoming more frequent and more intense. They are costing more in terms of
lives, property, and overall economic losses to communities and society as a whole. They are
often multifaceted and cause severe damage. Disaster initiated locally can become national and
even global crises. Today’s world urgently needs a new body of knowledge and techniques for
the mitigation of and response to disaster. Central to such a body of knowledge are disaster
preparedness, emergency and crisis management systems of government, of which capacity
building is becoming an increasingly important element in public administration, management
and governance. Today, disasters are to be managed by sound local, national, and global
governance, through all the phases of preparedness, prevention, mitigation and then to relief,
recovery and re-construction. During all these phases, government plays the most important
role.
In terms of disaster risk, Philippines ranked third among all of the countries with the
highest risks worldwide according to the World Risk Report 2018, with index value of 25.14%
(World Economic Forum, 2018). Recurrent natural disasters have prompted the Philippine
government to develop disaster risk reduction and management (DRRM) strategies to better
prepare, respond, and recover, as well as to be more resilient in the face of natural disasters.
(Iuchi, Jibiki, Solidum, and Santiago, 2019). However during the typhoon Yolanda in 2013 was
the most significant test of this revised governance structure and related strategies. The typhoon
revealed drawbacks of the current council-led governing structure to advancing resilience.
(Iuchi, Jibiki, Solidum, and Santiago, 2019).
Generally, the Philippine disaster management networks failed to respond effectively
because of significant reasons. Primarily, the overall disaster management network has a low
density, which means that trust and interdependencies were low because of the lack of
opportunities to have face-to-face encounters among member agencies at the regional level.
Moreover, decision-making in the regional disaster management network is less centralised, as
revealed by the lack of a dominant or lead agency in the entire regional disaster management.
This implies that there is weak collaboration in the regional network, which resulted in minimal
information sharing and ineffective disaster response. Despite the relative cohesiveness in the
local management networks, the presence and dominance of non-government agencies imply
lack of capacities in terms of decision-making and resources among the mandated agencies.
With this limitations, the local network structures nurtures the existing bureaucratic protocols
which make it more difficult for the local government units to operate effectively. These
network characteristics reduce the capacities of the local disaster management networks, which
leads to weak disaster operations.
Therefore, the tall structure and the lead organisation form of network governance (Provan
& Kenis 2008), which is centralised in nature, do not work in the local and regional disaster
management networks in Philippines, because at the regional level, such structure does not
build interdependencies among agencies, while at the local level, disaster response operations
are constrained by bureaucratic protocols, which make disaster management networks less
effective. Hence, shared governance should be explored. Structurally, a mixture of the forms of
network governance – lead organisation and shared governance – should be investigated.
However, trust and inter-dependency should be cultivated in centralised networks to come up
with effective mechanisms during disasters. They need to capitalize on available resources and
governance tools both at the national and local government levels to have the least casualties,
displacements, damages in times of disaster events.
Reducing disaster risk—and implicitly human vulnerability—is foundational to any
semblance of sustainable development. Understanding the processes that turn hazards into
disasters leading to loss and damage is an initial step. We need to remember that we, human
creates risk. Disasters are a product of economic, social, cultural, and political processes, and
while a hazard cannot be prevented, disasters can be. It is important to bear in mind “who” is
measuring “what” and “why”. It is critical that the government challenge the normative
approaches to disaster risk reduction and instead come up with the solutions that address the
root causes and underlying issues that create vulnerability—and thus lead to disaster—in the
first place. Disasters naturally require decentralised decision-making and intensive human
interactions (Kapucu & Van Wart 2008; Kirschenbaum 2004; Mileti 1999). Managing disasters
involves dynamic processes that are ideal yet demanding. Thus, collaboration among
organisations and government agencies is essential for the development of an effective strategy
and better performance during disasters.

References:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/
330842639_Natural_Hazards_Governance_in_the_Philippines