The dictionary defines resilience as “the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.”
The term can be applied to a variety of situations.
For example, just this month, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) upgraded its growth forecast for the Philippines, citing the economy’s “impressive resilience” during the onslaught of the Delta variant of the coronavirus.
In an update to its “Asia Development Outlook” report, the ADB said it now expects the Philippines to grow 5.1 percent this year, better than its previous projection of 4.5 percent.
“The Philippine economy has shown impressive resilience,” Kelly Bird, country director at ADB, said. “Public spending on infrastructure and continued vaccination of the population will help the country further accelerate its recovery in 2022.”
Of course, these projections were made just before Typhoon Odette (international name: Rai) slammed into the country on Dec. 16, killing more than 370 people and leaving in its wake a swathe of destruction that crippled at least five of the country’s regions the UN described as “catastrophic.”
As the authorities are still taking stock of the damage—to the power grid and telecommunications network, to houses and buildings, crops, agricultural infrastructure, and roads and bridges—economists agree this latest calamity will surely delay the country’s recovery.
The immediate concern, of course, is to provide relief to the millions of people affected by the typhoon. The presence of at least 10 United Nations agencies, 40 international and local non-government organizations and dozens of private sector groups that are now on the ground to help is a clear indication of the massive scale of the relief effort.
Still, it isn’t too early to consider longer-term solutions to the perennial setbacks we suffer from the 20 or so destructive typhoons that hit the country every year.
Congress, for instance, has proposed the creation of a Department of Disaster Resilience (DDR) to better manage our response to natural catastrophes. The bill creating the DDR has already passed the House of Representatives, but is still pending in the Senate.
The value of such a department, however, should not be limited to more efficiently responding to natural disasters as they occur, but planning for them in a way that protects our people and our resources, and that limits the damage the country suffers and reduces the time it takes to get us up on our feet again.
In the wake of Odette’s onslaught, government officials said regions battered by the typhoon may have to wait until February 2022 to get power back. An assurance from the Department of Energy that power would be restored in some areas of the Visayas and Mindanao before the May 2022 elections is hardly comforting. Meanwhile, Odette also knocked out telecommunications facilities that effectively cut off the most devastated areas cut off from the rest of the country, making rescue and relief efforts even more difficult.
In the province of Albay, the roofs of some evacuation centers were torn clear off, endangering the lives of the people who sought shelter there.
These are the types of situations a Department of Disaster Resilience should be planning to prevent. How do we make our power and telecommunications systems more resilient against the storms we know will visit every year, so that we don’t have to take months simply to restore service? How do we build more resilient evacuation centers that truly protect our people? If we put our best minds to the task and back them with the resources they need, surely we can have a truly more resilient country.