UN laments slow relocation of ‘Yolanda’ survivors

MANILA, Philippines—The head of the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction has expressed concern over the slow relocation of many survivors of Supertyphoon Yolanda, known internationally as Haiyan, forcing them to rebuild their homes in the so-called “danger zones” using unsafe materials.

Margareta Wahlstrom, who is also UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s special representative for disaster risk reduction, noted that one year after the storm ravaged Eastern Visayas, “only 150 households have been relocated to permanent shelters, as part of the government housing program.”

“Survivors are complaining about the rebuilding process, which is, according to them far too slow,” she said in a statement furnished the Inquirer by the UN agency’s head office in Geneva.

Wahlstrom, who is in Manila to attend the Top Leaders Forum, which aims to promote public-private partnership and multi-stakeholders’ collaboration as the best way to ensure long-term resilience in the face of disasters, pointed out “land tenure is a major hurdle to the resettlement program.”

This, she said, was “adding to the frustration of the many people who want a new home now.”

“Too many people have already rebuilt their homes in danger zones using unsafe materials,” she said.

Wahlstrom also reported that SM Prime Holdings, one of the region’s top private property developers, had turned over 200 permanent homes to the same number of families in Bogo City, Cebu, who were displaced by the typhoon.

“The 200 houses are the first of 1,000 homes that will be delivered by SM Care Village, SM Prime’s foundation, by the end of the year to poor families displaced by the supertyphoon,” she said.

She said that “with so many people still displaced or living in temporary shelters, the private sector is an obvious partner in the recovery process.”

“The 200 houses, designed above the requirements of existing building codes and mandated standards, are disaster-resilient with high quality roof slabs and concrete walls, which can withstand a Category 5 supertyphoon,” according to Wahlstrom.

On Nov. 8, the typhoon’s first anniversary, she urged the Philippines to “build on its exemplary record in disaster risk reduction by adopting a new paradigm for disaster risk governance, which should include the private sector.”

“While better preparedness, improved communication of early warnings, education and enhanced response can all play a role in bringing down the death toll from extreme weather events, economic losses can only be reduced if the private sector is engaged alongside the public sector in the work of disaster risk reduction,” she said.

“If we know that the percentage of the world’s economy exposed to cyclones has grown dramatically over the last 40 years as a consequence of economic development and that the private sector is responsible for over 70 percent of that investment, then it makes absolute sense to introduce the private sector to disaster risk managemen,” she added.

Wahlstrom called the Top Leaders Forum “a good example of this.”

Wahlstrom noted that “climate change was not exclusively to blame for the loss of some 7,000 lives” when the supertyphoon barreled through the Visayas on Nov. 8, 2013, “leaving millions homeless and jobless and many hundreds orphaned.”

“But it’s hard to separate the dancer from the dance. And it’s equally hard to say what percentage of the billions in economic losses was due to climate change and what percentage was due to the lack of risk management that often accompanies economic development and population growth,” she said.

The Philippines is “bearing the brunt of possible long-term change in weather patterns if the evidence of Haiyan and previous typhoons which hit Mindanao in 2012 and 2013 are any guide,” she warned.

But “there is no doubt that the Haiyan experience has influenced thinking on the post-2015 framework for DRR which will be adopted during the Third UN World Conference on DRR next March in Sendai, Japan,” she added.

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