Chapter II

Review Related Literature

This chapter covered some literature related to the study as they consisted the ideas, concepts and
studies that have special bearing on this study.

Related Literature

Disaster Preparedness provides for the key strategic actions that give importance to activities
revolving around community awareness and understanding; contingency planning; conduct of local drills
and the development of a national disaster response plan. Risk-related information coming from the
prevention and mitigation aspect is necessary in order for the preparedness activities to be responsive
to the needs of the people and situation on the ground. Also, the policies, budget and institutional
mechanisms established under the prevention and mitigation priority area will be further enhanced
through capacity building activities, development of coordination mechanisms. Through these,
coordination, complementation and interoperability of work in DRRM operations and essential services
will be ensured. Behavioral change created by the preparedness aspect is eventually measured by how
well people responded to the disasters. At the frontlines of preparedness are the local government
units, local chief executives and communities. Disaster Response gives importance to activities during
the actual disaster response operations from needs assessment to search and rescue to relief operations
to early recovery activities are emphasized. The success and realization of this priority area rely heavily
on the completion of the activities under both the prevention and mitigation and preparedness aspects,
including among others the coordination and communication mechanisms to be developed. On-the-
ground partnerships and the vertical and horizontal coordination work between and among key
stakeholders will contribute to successful disaster response operations and its smooth transition
towards early and long-term recovery work. The Rehabilitation and recovery priority area cover areas
like employment and livelihoods, infrastructure and lifeline facilities, housing and resettlement, among
others. These are recovery efforts done when people are already outside of the evacuation centers.
There are compelling reasons why the Philippines should adopt disaster risk reduction and management
(DRRM) and climate change adaptation (CCA). It is exposed to disasters and hazards due to its
geography and geology as well as the presence of internal disputes in some areas. Tropical cyclones and
its sequential effects of rain and windstorms, as well as floods are the most prevalent types of hydro-
meteorological hazards in the country. Between 1997 and 2007, eighty-four (84) tropical cyclones
entered the Philippine Area of Responsibility (PAR). These typhoons resulted to a total of 13,155 in
human casualty and more than 51 million families have been affected. Economic losses due to typhoon
damages in agriculture, infrastructures and private properties are estimated to reach P158.242-B. Some
of the most devastating floods and landslides are triggered by these typhoons that happened also within
this period. The El Nino Southern Oscillation which is a periodic disaster recorded high economic costs in
just a single occurrence. In 2010, out of the almost PhP 25-M worth of damages to properties caused by
natural disasters,tropical cyclones contributed to more than half. These affected more than 3 million
 people in that year alone. Environmental factors such as denuded forests aggravate flood risks. The
pace of deforestation since the 1930s accelerated in the 1950s and 1960s, before falling slightly in the
1980s. Even now, the effects of loose soil and reduced forest cover from past forestry activities are felt
in frequent landslides and floods. Recent events show that the annual monsoon season in the country
has brought severe flooding in most areas. In 2011, most of the disasters that claimed the lives of
people and affected properties and livelihoods of the most vulnerable were brought about by increased
rainfall which caused massive flash flooding in areas which don’t normally experience such. Between
January to September 2011, more than 50 incidents of flash flooding and flooding and more than 30
landslides occurred, mostly caused by increased rainfall and illegal logging. Typhoon Sendong alone
caused the lives of more than 1,000 people and damaged properties amounting to billions of pesos. In
addition, the Philippines is situated along a highly seismic area lying along the Pacific Ring of Fire and is
highly-prone to earthquakes. According to the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology
(PHIVLOCS), the country experiences an average of five (5) earthquakes a day (Department of Internal
and Local Government of the Philippines, 2012).

Over the past 20 years disasters have affected 4.4 billion people, caused $2 trillion of damage
and killed 1.3 million people. These losses have outstripped the total value of official development
assistance in the same period. Natural disasters disproportionately affect people living in developing
countries and the most vulnerable communities within those countries. Over 95 per cent of people killed
by natural disasters are from developing countries (Extreme Weather and Natural Disasters, 2012).

Disaster risk reduction is at the core of the mission of the World Meteorological Organization
(WMO. WMO, through its scientific and technical programs, its network of Global Meteorological
Centers and Regional Specialized Meteorological and Climate Centers, provide scientific and technical
services. This includes observing, detecting, monitoring, predicting and early warning of a wide range of
weather–, climate- and water-related hazards. Through a coordinated approach, and working with its
partners, WMO addresses the information needs and requirements of the disaster risk management
community in an effective and timely fashion. Every year, disasters related to meteorological,
hydrological and climate hazards cause significant loss of life, and set back economic and social
development by years, if not decades. Between 1980 and 2007, nearly 7500 natural disasters worldwide
took the lives of over 2 million people and produced economic losses estimated at over 1.2 trillion US
dollars. Of this, 90 per cent of the natural disasters, 71 per cent of casualties and 78 per cent of
economic losses were caused by weather-, climate- water-related hazards such as droughts, floods,
windstorms, tropical cyclones, storm surges, extreme temperatures, landslides and wild fires, or by
health epidemics and insect infestations directly linked to meteorological and hydrological conditions.
Over the past five decades, economic losses related to hydro-meteorological hazards have increased,
but the human toll has fallen dramatically. This is thanks to scientific advances in forecasting, combined
with proactive disaster risk reduction policies and tools, including contingency planning and early
warning systems in a number of high risk countries (World Meteorological Organization, 2011).

Recent disasters in Haiti and Pakistan in 2010 showed the need to “use knowledge, innovation
and education to build a culture of safety and resilience at all levels” as articulated in the Hyogo
Framework for Action 2005-2015. The role of education for disaster risk reduction strategies can thus be
presented according to three types of activities: 1) Save lives and prevent injuries should a hazardous
event occur, 2) Prevent interruptions to the provision of education, or ensure its swift resumption in the
event of an interruption, and 3) Develop a resilient population that is able to reduce the economic,
social and cultural impacts should a hazardous event occur. Education for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR)
takes into account the relationships between society, environment, economy, and culture and their
impacts. It also promotes critical thinking and problem-solving as well as social and emotional life skills
that are essential to the empowerment of groups threatened or affected by disasters. ESD, through its
interdisciplinary and holistic approach to learning, helps create resilient societies. It encourages a long-
term perspective in decision-making processes, critical thinking, and holistic and innovative approaches
to problem-solving. ESD, therefore, contributes to DRR while DRR increases the relevance and the
quality of education in disaster-prone areas. UNESCO gives specialized policy advice and technical
assistance to affected governments, UN agencies and non-profit organizations in reactivating education
system in post-disaster situations. It also plays a catalytic role, including advocacy, networking and
participation in inter-agency activities, to ensure that educational needs are met in post-disaster
settings. It is actively involved in post-disaster program such as the Myanmar Education Recovery
Program (MERP) in the Asia-Pacific region. UNESCO has been playing a valuable role within the UN
International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) Thematic Platform on Knowledge and Education.
With its ISDR partner agencies, UNESCO promotes the integration of Disaster Risk Reduction in national
educational plans, school curricula and national strategies, as well as supporting natural disaster
preparedness. UNESCO has promoted Education for Disaster Risk Reduction at a number of international
events, including the workshop on “ESD and disaster risk reduction: building disaster-resilient societies”,
organized during the 2009 Bonn World Conference on ESD (UNESCO, 2011).

Much can be done to minimize the impacts of natural disasters. The Australian Government
recognizes that in order to be sustainable, key sectors of development—such as health, education,
water and sanitation, and food security—must ensure that their activities and infrastructure are
disaster-resilient. Australia, along with most of our developing country partners, is a signatory to the
Hyogo Framework for Action 2005–2015 Building the resilience of nations and communities to disasters,
the international blueprint for disaster risk reduction. It highlights that disaster risk reduction, along with
climate change adaptation, is an essential aspect of sustainable development (Australian Aid, 2011).

In the period 2000-2009 as many as 85 per cent of the people reported affected by disasters belonged
to the Asia-Pacific Region, where Australia provides most of its international development assistance
(International Federation of the Red Crescent, World Disaster Report, 2010).

Disasters often follow natural hazards. A disaster's severity depends on how much impact a
hazard has on society and the environment. The scale of the impact in turn depends on the choices we
make for our lives and for our environment. These choices relate to how we grow our food, where and
how we build our homes, what kind of government we have, how our financial system works and even
what we teach in schools. Each decision and action make us more vulnerable to disasters - or more
resilient to them. Disaster risk reduction is the concept and practice of reducing disaster risks through
systematic efforts to analyse and reduce the causal factors of disasters. Reducing exposure to hazards,
lessening vulnerability of people and property, wise management of land and the environment, and
improving preparedness for adverse events are all examples of disaster risk reduction. Disaster risk
reduction includes disciplines like disaster management, disaster mitigation and disaster preparedness,
 but DRR is also part of sustainable development. In order for development activities to be sustainable
they must also reduce disaster risk. On the other hand, unsound development policies will increase
disaster risk - and disaster losses. Thus, DRR involves every part of society, every part of government,
and every part of the professional and private sector (National Meteorological and Hydrological
Services, 2010).

Related Studies

Foreign Studies

A problem with conceiving of disaster in this way is that it becomes too easy to imagine
disaster events as isolated moments or periods lying outside the influence of development planning. It is
argued here that disasters are, on the contrary, an outcome of processes of risk accumulation deeply
embedded in contemporary and historical development decisions. Disaster risk results from a
combination of hazards (potentially damaging events or processes) and people’s vulnerability to those
hazards. Both hazards and vulnerability are to varying extents products of development processes. A
further common perception is that disasters are usually large-scale events involving a single hazard, such
as a flood or an earthquake. As far as scale is concerned, there is at present no agreed threshold at
which point a collection of discrete losses or disruptions can reach disaster status. Political spin can
either exaggerate or play down the scale of a disaster, with an eye respectively on donor aid or on
private sector investment flows. The sole publicly accessible global database on disasters and their
impacts, EM-DAT, uses an absolute definition which is statistically convenient but inevitably
arbitrary.Scale needs to be seen in relation to the population and economic size of animpacted country
for meaningful international comparisons to be made. A disaster with major sub-national impacts may
appear relatively unimportant at national or international level. Scale is particularly important for small
island developing states (Prevention Web, 2012).

The Dominican Republic occupies two-thirds of the Island of Hispaniola in the Major Antilles
below the Tropic of Cancer in the Caribbean Region. Covering an area of 48,670 square kilometers and
including the islands of Saona, Beata, Catalina and other smaller islands, the Island is shared with the
Republic of Haiti with a 383 kilometers “ porous” border to the west. A tropical country, it has eight
extensive rugged mountain ranges that span the country, separated by relatively fertile valleys, sierras
and limestone regions. With an average precipitation of around 1,500 mm, the country has large bodies
of subterranean water, fourteen principal river basins, over 400 rivers systems and streams that feed
the country’s reservoirs, power hydroelectric plants and feed extensive irrigation systems. The
Dominican Republic is subject to a number of different hazards including hydro meteorological events
such as tropical storms, depressions and hurricanes, floods, landslides and droughts, as well as seismic
events including earthquakes and tsunamis, and finally diseases including dengue, malaria and most
recently an outbreak of cholera crossing the Haitian border into Dominican territory in late 2010. EM-
DAT registers 47 natural events during 1980-2011, of which 21 were caused by storms, followed by 18
floods, five epidemics and one earthquake. Jointly these events have caused the death of 1,486 and
affected 2.7 million people, whilst causing close to US$ 2.61 billion in economic damages. Statistics from
the 2009 Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction indicate that, in terms of severe
exposure, 6.3 per cent of the population is located in high-risk earthquake hazard zones subject to
significant loss, followed by 5.9 per cent in hurricane zones and 5.4 per cent in drought zones. Additional
estimates indicate that up to 80 per cent of the population may be at risk of suffering both directly and
indirectly from one or more disasters. Notably, the Dominican Republic has the highest number of
deaths per million inhabitants and highest mortality risk to disaster in the Caribbean after Haiti, placing
it high on regional rankings for total disaster losses (International Federation of Red Cross and Red
Crescent Societies, 2011).

Local Studies

The evidence gathered during the course of this research clearly points to positive outcomes for
children as a result of the integration of DRR into education. While it was not always possible to
document the specific outcomes, for example, in the two country case studies where disasters had not
struck since the time of implementation, it was very clear that significant change has occurred at both
the national and the local levels, which is leading to increased education and greater preparedness and
resiliency among communities. Specific outcomes documented included greater preparedness among
children, the ability to identify and address risk outside of disasters, continuity of education, and a
greater sense of security and confidence. Further outcomes at the community level include safer school
buildings and greater awareness of risk management. Clearly, outcomes are important, but there is also
a growing trend to redesign evaluations to focus not only on inputs-outputs-outcomes, but also on the
changes in decision-making processes that have facilitated the outcomes; in other words, how results
are being achieved. This study found that there were quite a lot of lessons to be learned about how
outcomes for children were being achieved (Villanueva, 2011).

A review of DRR-related educational documentation and of the 30 case studies featured in this
report reveals a range of approaches to the inclusion of disaster risk reduction in school curricula. The
most frequently found approach is that of infusion or permeation whereby DRR themes and topics
appear within the curriculum of specific school subjects. This usually happens following a curriculum
review whereby the curriculum is scrutinized for its DRR relevance and potential. The nature of the
scrutiny ranges from the literal (i.e., a discussion of earthquakes in the geography curriculum provides
an opportunity for DRR) to the holistic (i.e., identifying opportunities for DRR not necessarily grounded
in manifest disaster-related topics in a syllabus but in the intrinsic potential of the subject itself, e.g.,
seeing the opportunities for reinforcing a culture of safety through, say, drama, mathematics or music).
A literal reading of curriculum tends to result in limited infusion, i.e., DRR is integrated into a narrow
band of subjects, typically the physical sciences (Geography and Science) in which study of natural
hazards has a longstanding place. A holistic reading of curriculum potential opens up the possibility of
DRR integration within and across all or most subjects. Limited infusion is more likely to expose DRR to
the cultural assumptions of the restricted range of subjects in which it appears. With Geography and
Natural Science, the most regularly chosen carrier subjects, the culture of the classroom is likely to
orient learning outcomes towards the acquisition of knowledge and limited skills (i.e., skills traditionally
associated with those subjects). This in turn may well preclude the realization of the practical and
community-linked disaster mitigation and resilience goals and dispositions of DRR. Values and attitudes
associated with DRR are also less likely to receive a thorough airing within a subject culture of
‘objectivity’. Limited infusion more often than not relies on the presence of pre-existing disaster-related
topics in the curriculum, thus lending an arbitrary rather than a holistic or goals-derived orientation to
DRR curriculum development strategies (Gupta, 2011).