Philippines tops disaster preparedness

Filipinos most disaster-ready

Manila Times

Associated Press 

16 August 2024

THE Philippines tops a list of 142 countries in disaster preparedness, a recent global survey showed, with the highest proportion of households — 84 percent — having a disaster plan.

This was higher than Vietnam (83 percent), Cambodia (82 percent), Thailand (67 percent) and the United States (62 percent), the survey by Gallup for the Lloyd's Register Foundation showed.

The level of preparedness is not surprising, since no country ranked higher than the Philippines for having experienced a natural disaster in the last five years, with 87 percent of respondents saying they had.

Southeast Asia is among the regions most prone to natural disasters, but a new analysis released Thursday showed its people also feel the best equipped to deal with them.

It seemed logical that the countries in and around the Pacific Ring of Fire, vulnerable to earthquakes, typhoons, storm surges and other dangers, are also the best prepared, but the survey by Gallup for the Lloyd's Register Foundation showed that's not always the case in other regions.

"Frequent exposure to hazard isn't the only factor that determines how prepared people feel," Benedict Vigers, a research consultant with Gallup, said.

The report found the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) played a key role in disaster risk reduction, and Vigers said the region's wider approach includes widespread and effective early-warning systems, scaled-up community approaches and regional cooperation, and good access to disaster finance.

"Southeast Asia's success in feelings of disaster preparedness can be linked to its high exposure to disasters, its relatively high levels of resilience — from individual people to overall society, and the region's approach to — and investment into — disaster risk management more broadly," he said.

Forty percent of people surveyed in Southeast Asia said they had experienced a natural disaster in the past five years, while a similar number — 36 percent — in Southern Asia said the same. But 67 percent of Southeast Asians felt among the best prepared to protect their families and 62 percent had emergency plans, while Southern Asians felt less ready, with 49 percent and 29 percent respectively.

Respondents from North America, which is significantly less disaster-prone than Southeast Asia, said they only felt slightly less prepared, while those in Northern and Western Europe were in the middle of the pack.

The results from Southeast Asia, primarily made up of lower-middle-income countries, suggest wealth is not a deciding factor in disaster response and preparation, said Ed Morrow, senior campaigns manager for Lloyd's Register Foundation, a British-based global safety charity.

Southeast Asia is "a region that clearly has much to teach the world in terms of preparing for disasters," he said.

The data were drawn from the World Risk Poll, conducted every two years, with the main results from the 2023 survey published in June. Questions on disasters focused on natural hazards instead of conflicts or financial disasters, and excluded the coronavirus pandemic.

Surveys were conducted of people ages 15 and above in 142 countries and based on telephone or face-to-face conversations with about 1,000 or more respondents in each country with the exception of China, where some 2,200 people were contacted online.

The margin of error ranged from plus or minus 2.2 to 4.9 percentage points, for an overall 95 percent confidence level.

"It is our intention that this freely available data should be used by governments, regulators, businesses, NGOs and international bodies to inform and target policies and interventions that make people safer," Morrow said.