Keywords: natural hazards; disaster response; Duterte; Marcos Jr.; Philippines

Introduction

The Philippines is no stranger to natural hazards. Because it sits on the typhoon belt, the country is visited by an average of twenty typhoons each year, exacerbating flooding issues rampant all over the country. Due to its location within the Pacific Ring of Fire, it also experiences frequent earthquakes and disastrous volcanic eruptions.

Based on data compiled by the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT), the Philippines suffered from an annual average of 14 extreme events and major calamities from 2016 to the first seven months of 2023. During this period, the country faced around 53 storms, 7 of which were categorized as super typhoons, 17 flooding events, 14 earthquakes, eruptions from Taal Volcano and Mayon Volcano, epidemics like measles and dengue, landslides, and certain technological disasters.

With the earth continuously warming and the environment constantly destroyed, the probability of these hazards recurring, accompanied by increasingly catastrophic impacts, remains high. According to the most recent assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), human-induced climate change will likely worsen the frequency and intensity of extreme weather phenomena.

With the high risk and exposure to various natural hazards, including slow-onset calamities such as rising sea levels and drought, and human-induced calamities, the Philippines has consistently ranked as one of the countries most at risk worldwide. Over half of the Philippine population lives in the coastal areas, around 18 per cent live below the poverty threshold, and about one-quarter are employed in the agriculture sector, a sector vulnerable to extreme weather events.