By:
Maria Golda Hilario 03:04 AM July 02, 2017
Just last June 28,
President Duterte signed Executive Order No. 29 renaming National Disaster
Consciousness Month to National Disaster Resilience Month. The government’s
shift from building awareness to building resilience is more than welcome.
Yet the lack of power
continues to be grossly overlooked in response and rehabilitation efforts,
despite the harsh lessons Typhoon “Yolanda” has taught even veteran
humanitarian actors.
I experienced this
firsthand when I was deployed to be part of a rapid assessment team in Tacloban
two days after Yolanda. It was our power bank, and not our wad of cash, which
helped us secure a room for our team. A bicycle enabled a barangay health
worker to travel from Basey in Samar to Tacloban to solicit medicines for
nursing mothers who gave birth in the wake of the typhoon. In contrast, some
organizations were not able to secure vehicles to conduct initial assessments
beyond Tacloban for lack of available fuel.
We at the Institute of
Climate and Sustainable Cities verified this in our new case study on
humanitarian response. After interviewing and surveying representatives of
several humanitarian organizations which responded in Yolanda’s wake, we
confirmed that most of these groups have systematically missed integrating
energy needs and energy considerations in their respective contingency and
response plans.
There was a general
assumption then that blackouts would be short, the government would restore
power immediately, the local market would resume operations soon after, and there
would be enough fuel supplies. This dangerous assumption has led to more costly
choices, including the procurement of fossil-fueled generators which distorted
local markets and created competition with the survivors themselves. This lack
of foresight has also proved fatal, when an unattended kerosene lamp razed a
tent city in Tacloban and claimed the lives of a mother and her six children.
Despite these
shortcomings, the humanitarian community can also be credited for their efforts
to distribute solar lamps to disaster-affected communities. Nearly four years
after Yolanda, some of the solar lamps that were distributed by humanitarian
organizations are still being used by Taclobanons who have yet to be connected
to the main electricity grid.
The support of
humanitarian organizations has also enabled Yolanda survivors to lead the way
in integrating renewable energy solutions into their community disaster risk
reduction and preparedness efforts. A number of Yolanda survivors and students
of Eastern Visayas State University were able to assemble “TekPaks,” portable
solar-powered generators we designed for emergencies, which we handed over to
fisherfolk from Laguna who were affected by Tropical Storm “Ondoy” in 2009.
Renewable energy would
not only help humanitarian actors better deliver in times of disasters. It
would also allow vulnerable communities to become resilient in times of crisis.
Starting this month, we encourage government and humanitarian agencies alike to
consider how future humanitarian responses will be energized.
Maria Golda Hilario is
the associate for program development of the Institute for Climate and
Sustainable Cities, a climate change and clean energy policy group.
No comments:
Post a Comment