Making Cities Resilient Report 2012

CHAPTER 4 | What are local governments doing to build resilience
WHAT ARE LOCAL GOVERNMENTS DOING TO BUILD RESILIENCE
This chapter presents many examples of resilience-building activities that cities and local governments
are undertaking for each of the Ten Essentials for making cities resilient. It also points out gaps in areas
that require further work to ensure more effective disaster risk reduction.
1. Institutional and administrative
framework for risk reduction
Essential 1: Put in place organisation and coordination to understand and reduce disaster risk, based
on participation of citizen groups and civil society. Build local alliances. Ensure that all departments
understand their role in disaster risk reduction and preparedness.
The Campaign and the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) emphasize the need for all city and town
governments to have an institutional basis for implementing risk reduction that is multi-sectoral and
involves all relevant stakeholders. Some Campaign cities have created municipal-level institutions to
coordinate disaster risk and climate change, bringing together the functions and expertise of existing
government departments to address hazard risks. In some countries, national frameworks and laws
have helped create or strengthen municipal-level institutions. City governments are also engaging with
a wide range of stakeholders beyond government departments, including multilateral and bilateral
organisations, universities and research organisations that offer technical support, the private sector,
NGOs and community organisations.
City and local-level institutional structures
City and regional governments are creating councils, committees, authorities, agencies, and other local
disaster risk management institutions. In some cities, the mandate of existing bodies has been expanded
beyond the scope of emergency preparedness and response to include disaster risk, climate change and
resilience. In doing so, cities have also brought together government departments from across sectors or
regions to collaborate on risk reduction. The institutional frameworks also include defining responsibilities
for each government department. In Bhubaneswar, the city government has expanded its focus on postdisaster
response to include disaster risk management, setting up institutions at the city and ward level
to address disaster risk 6 .
Strategies to institutionalise risk reduction and disaster management have been most effective where
individuals or departments within local governments are legally responsible for implementation and
coordination among all relevant departments or sectors. Cities in the Philippines have gone beyond a
coordinating structure at the city level to institutionalise a community-scale structure for disaster risk
management. In Makati City, a Barangay Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Committee acts as the
implementing arm at community level of the Makati City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council;
a similar structure is in place in Quezon City. San Francisco, Cebu has effectively empowered a dormant
Purok structure for community development and disaster risk management (Puroks are one level below
the Barangays and form the lowest level of informal governance (see Box 3.1). In Albay Province, a key
practice for improving risk reduction was the redefining of functional roles and responsibilities of different
institutions and task units. The Province has had a central coordinating office for disaster preparedness,
response and recovery since 1994. This has now been joined with a technical secretariat to create the
Albay Province Safety and Emergency Management Office (APSEMO), which has initiated many innovative
approaches to tackling disaster risk and climate change.
6. This has included a constitution for a ward-level disaster management committee, the formation of a disaster management team and
preparation of the city disater managment plan. Forty-seven wards have prepared such plans (14, 16, 32)
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