The International Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction and Gender in Beijing last April 20 had Philippine Senator Loren Legarda giving the opening address, a rare honor to the country.

She has been a long-time advocate for environmental enhancement in the international arena. The United Nations designated her regional champion for Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation for Asia-pacific.

Such credentials, as well as her involvement in shaping disaster risk reduction measures as a legislator, made her the perfect choice to give that opening speech.

In the Beijing assembly, Senator Loren identified five challenges that must be met worldwide if climate change is to be tamed. These are:

1. “The understanding that our social vulnerability depends much on the choices we make and the actions we take as leaders and decision makers, as planners and builders, and as members of a society and a community”;

2. “We need to revisit and rethink our current frameworks and strategies for socio-economic development. Our development approaches and practices in the past decades have allowed disaster vulnerabilities to grow, to spread, and to prevail until today”;

3. “We must adopt an innovative, out-of-the box approach, to tackle effectively this most complex human development problem of the 21st century. We need a more integrated, holistic, and proactive approach of reducing vulnerabilities and of building the resilience of nations and communities to disasters; an approach that builds on partnerships, collaboration and cooperation of all stakeholders”;

4. “To facilitate proactive action, we need to change our way of thinking and doing --- we need a paradigm shift, an overhaul of policies that have become irrelevant and unresponsive to today’s complex problems of risk, poverty, gender and climate change”;

5. “We need to invest today for a safer tomorrow. We need to make disaster risk reduction our primary strategy for adapting to climate change”.

Last year, Loren, in collaboration with the UN, convened an international meeting of parliamentarians in Manila on advancing disaster risk reduction as a tool for climate change adaptation. The outcome of that meeting — a statement of consensus called the Manila Call for Action — urged delegates to make the Hyogo Framework For Action legally binding. The HFA commits parliamentarians to work for reduction of disaster risks and gender inequality in their respective countries.

“This advocacy is so important that everybody’s responsibility and contribution, however big or small, matter. And, as a regional advocate, I look forward to working with more parliamentarians within and outside Asia for the realization of our goals,” Loren stated.

“We cannot afford to be complacent and to let disasters deepen poverty and cause unbearable hardship to our peoples. The future depends upon us. Let us rise to our duty. Let us be the new breed of leaders of the 21st Century,” Loren concluded.