As my first visit to Manila, one of the south Asia’s largest mega cities, seeing the plenty of high rise buildings standing along side of manila bay simply triggers my though on how resilient the city is to grow as sustainable urbanized area through the lens of disaster and climate change risks. Being a country which is located along the the fire of Ring, Philippines is vulnerable to disasters of earthquakes and volcanoes. In addition to the geographical vulnerability of natural disasters, cities in the country have been suffering from the impacts of increased climate change too. According to the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA), Metro Manila is now the “third most vulnerable to climate change” among Southeast Asia’s districts and provinces. As an important underlying risk of disasters, massive urban development in metro manila region imposes the high exposure of population and infrastructures to the natural disasters, generating new risks to turn natural hazards into disasters with increased exposure and vulnerability to disasters. Migration and Urbanisation Many of the people I met here in Manila including APLP alumni, who moved to the cities in Metro manila region for work mentioned many career opportunities are prevalent in Manila and moving to manila and working here is everyone’s desire. Economic zones in metro manila region attract the population from other provinces to move to the urban cities of metro Manila making cities more congested and populous in region. Due to insufficient housings in urbanized cities of metro manila, large population of slum dwellers are found living in informal settlements and slum communities located along rivers and creeks, in garbage dumps, along railroad tracks, under bridges, and beside factories and other industrial establishments. Floods
Asides from migration pattern which has been taking place over time, massive urbanization is also highly driven by many of the luxury and residential condominiums across the cities which are being under construction with the available business opportunities for expatriate community in metro manila. While Philippines struggles with typhoons and storms every year in monsoon season, the common consequences of urban development exacerbated the situation of urban flooding with over rainfall. All the land space of cities is fully occupied by Industrial/ business structures and public infrastructures like schools and malls in cities. Open space of land to absorb the rain water are not found, allowing to channel the rainwater into insufficient drainage system. The lack of upgraded capacity of existing drainage system with the growing population of cities fail to manage the water flow properly, leading to worsened flooding situation. Earthquakes A few days after my arrival in manila, 5.2 magnitude of Earthquake hits the southern Luzone island, consequently, Senator Loren Legarda’s renewed the call for heightened earthquake preparedness across the country. According to “the Earthquake Impact Reduction study in Metro Manila in 2004”, it’s expected to have 40% of damage to the buildings and infrastructures in metro manila region with the projection of 7.2 magnitude earthquake. Being the home to more than 11.8 million people and accounts for 37 per cent of the country’s GDP, there is no doubt to expect the widespread damage when large quake hits the region. Shift from awareness to actions Having experienced of devastating past disasters and being well informed for the projected strong earthquake risk in region, people in manila are highly aware of disaster risks. Moving from being aware of risks to taking actions, we need to put more effort on disaster preparedness measures by conducting more simulation exercise, earthquake drills and mitigation measures of mainstreaming DRR into development sector for mainly building infrastructures. The central government and local government units play an important role to take initiatives on DRR measures and engage both the public and private sectors in increasing resilience and undertaking preparedness activities. Despite the presence of laws and regulations on DRR and urban planning through decentralized governance system, collective effort among local governments and private sector needs to be strengthened to tackle the flooding risks and better prepare for earthquake risks. There is also a strong need to strengthen the law enforcement on land use plan, building codes and regulated development of new public infrastructures (especially high rise buildings) in metropolitan manila region. Areas where many structures were built before the building code was enacted, structures like old churches and high rise building will need to be evaluated to see if they can withstand earthquakes. Disaster preparedness requires leadership at all levels from communities to different government units. Here comes with the critical questions that need to be addressed in building the disaster resilient metro manila region. Is metro manila well prepared enough to be resilient to natural disaster risks with accelerated urbanisation? Are the political leaders effective in DRR to build resilience of their communities from devastating disasters? What are the limitations of community to participate in DRR activities due to low awareness on disaster risks or being occupied with other work?
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Are we hopeful for a better India where women and girls enjoy their freedom just like men and boys?4/25/2017 Women in today India earn every rights as a citizen; having a voice in political and business world in the country. Significant progress in legal aspect on gender equality has been made by the government and women empowerment movements within country. Despite the general impression on the position of women in today India, 2 weeks of my visit to India offered me a quick view on the status of gender equality captured along with the thought-provoking observations during travel from rural to urban communities of India. I completely understand that one cannot assume the role of women looking at one specific strata of society in a country where over 1.3 million population live within many layers of social strata and diverse backgrounds of religions, ethnics, cultures. However, when I collect my observations and personal thoughts through the lens of women and their rights, I found women safety and women rights as a biggest social issue in the society that needs to be taken as urgent matter by the collective effort within the society. Coming to rural state of India, seeing men everywhere on streets in grocery shops and everywhere drive me to thoughts of where are the women? Are they traditionally excluded from all of these activities? Through my interaction with women in underprivileged communities of rural India, it led me to a better understanding on the role of women and girls in rural society in which girls are usually kept at home for household tasks while boys and men are given priority for schools and other opportunities. From my conversation with the local women, I happened to know “the mentality of the rural people on having a girl child which is considered as bad luck for the family. Since girls are going to eventually get married and no contributions in return their family is expected, it is believed that there is no point of investment in young girls. There is still a conservative mindset of male children preference and strong social challenges suppressing the role of women in society, especially in rural India due to deeply rooted cultural and traditional beliefs in rural India.” As my first time to the capital city Delhi, taking metro train gave me food for thoughts on keeping separate compartment for women. I simply suppose that this harassment problem could not be solved by keeping women in a separate coach on train as It is not to say that women are safe only when they isolate themselves from men, instead it could lead the view of gender discrimination among women and man. However, having own experience of taking metro in rush hours made me realize the hardship of women trying to have a tiny little space in huge crowd of men. That experience left me with questions of “Is it even a right solution for protecting women from harassment on train?” How could one say women are not harassed when they get out of their comfort zone of women compartments on trains, what about on streets? One of my local Indian friends shared her experience of taking local train while traveling to other states at the very crowded time, she got a sexual harassment by a guy, then she suddenly felt powerless, and were just crying over one hour. When women are harassed in that way, it is always a moment that they feel emotional and vulnerable, not being able to response in any ways no matter how they are independent and powerful at other times. Having realized all these challenges of women with short term solutions of government to ensure women safety during public transportation, what would be the long term solution to ensure that women are treated with respect and they have the freedom and rights to live their daily lives without worrying about any form of harassment? How could we teach the men to respect women better? We need the foundation of society with a functioning law and efficient system to create an environment with dignity and safety for the women in India. While women have to be empowered, men also have to be educated to support them to get empowered. The best place to start is from our individual actions taken in the context of community and social groups that would enable to drive the change from millions of people. Our children, new generations can bring the change to the the whole our community to improve the gender equality gap. Being born as a girl or boy should not mean they have more privilege than the other and it should not be criteria to allow access to the education and other opportunities in their lives. Women should not be in fear for all the physical, social, mental harassment at all the time on their ways from home to schools, and workplace. As a greater impact, it should not be the barrier to country’s growth and development which is being contributed by the large population of women in India.
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