Leni on disasters: It’s about being ready, sharing

VICE President Leni Robredo (right) and Sister Jayanti Kirpalani, director for the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University in Europe, are in complete agreement about how to contend with conflict and disasters.

To the subject at hand, “Inner Strength in Times of Conflict and Disaster,” special guest Leni Robredo added her own parameter, “A Culture of Resilience,” and demonstrated yet again the form that made her 14th Vice President of the Republic.

Robredo spoke in simple terms, told familiar stories and promptly engaged a diverse crowd—students, teachers, businessmen, policemen in uniform, members of religious congregations—that packed the SMX Convention Center in SM Aura, Taguig City, Wednesday afternoon.

She had excused herself from a Cabinet meeting to get there, if a bit late, the Vice President said, because such was the compulsion to share her thoughts.

First out, last in

The free public program, held in observance of National Disaster Consciousness Month, was organized by Brahma Kumaris (BK) Foundation Philippines, with Jayanti Kirpalani, the NGO’s head delegate to the United Nations Climate Change Conference, as main speaker.

Kirpalani stopped halfway through her talk to give Robredo the floor, “because we do understand how busy you are, Madame Vice President.” That moment illustrated the essence of their respective messages —cooperation expressed as flexibility.

Robredo related: “The city where I have lived almost my entire life (Naga in Camarines Sur) gets the lion’s share of storms in the country. All of the 19 years that my husband Jesse was mayor, we were used to him being the first man out when a typhoon was coming, and the last man in once it was over.”

First-hand witness

The financial toll of disasters on homes and properties is heavy as it is, she said. “How do we even begin to measure the effects of natural disasters on people’s sanity and emotional well-being?”

She had seen it all first-hand, Robredo said, narrating her encounter with an 80-year-old woman taking care of a bedridden 32-year-old grandson in a 10-square-meter hovel with no water or electricity. “The poor, the old, the very young, and those who have special needs are most vulnerable to natural disasters,” she said, “(and) it is harder for them to recover and rebuild.”

While visiting “the farthest reaches” of her district, the once Camarines Sur third district representative said she was appalled to see that barangays did not have disaster plans.

“There was no clear information about the most defenseless areas, no evacuation procedures. Instead of drawing up a long-term strategy, local leaders were content with distributing relief goods.”

3rd most vulnerable

Robredo warned about the projected increase in average global temperatures, which would cause sea levels to rise. “The World Risk Index lists the Philippines in third position among the 171 most vulnerable countries,” she pointed out.

Already, disasters strain government finances at an average of P15 billion in “actual direct damage,” she said. “We can no longer depend on traditional ways of addressing the problem. Nor can we continue the deleterious effects of patronage and politics behind the aid. The national and local governments need to work together to find solutions that would best mitigate the consequences of climate change.”

Easily comprehensible adaptation strategies for communities are compulsory, she said. “We need to beat the drums to create awareness at the household level. We need to involve individual families in creating plans because, as we know, leaving a home and farm that has fed a family for years is a highly emotional move that most Filipinos do not want to do until it’s too late. Without their buy-in, no disaster strategy will work.”

Kirpalani, the London-based BK senior official, who oversees centers in Europe and the Middle East, took it one step further: “It’s true all these physical preparations should be in place before any disaster strikes,” she said, “because at the moment of impact, one should have space in his or her mind to think of others too, and generate responses of sharing, giving and empowering.” These responses can be arrived at only with prior practice at being calm and connecting with a wellspring of strength and goodness inside.

Shared responsibility

She made practical examples of two countries hit by the same kind of natural calamity. Succeeding events in one country included looting, disorder and bickering in the government, she recalled and, in the other, “activities propelled by cooperation, caring and generosity.” Thus we see, she said, who was “internally prepared.”

Ultimately, the two speakers agreed that addressing climate change is, as Robredo put it, “a shared responsibility, a mutual obligation of the community of nations.”

Kirpalani, interviewed during a meeting of the UN conference series, has said, “To think ‘this is my country and that is theirs’ is no longer going to work. We sink together, or survive this together.”/rga