Building Resilience and Community-Based Disaster Risk Management (CBDRM): Experiences and Lessons from Communities in the Philippines

Abstract

Community-based Disaster Risk Management or CBDRM is a “people and development oriented, comprehensive and participatory approach in reducing possible losses in the lives, properties, community resources and environment due to natural and human induced hazards” (Luna, E. M. (2007). At the center of the CBDRM framework and approach are people and communities – the analysis of people’s vulnerabilities and their individual and collective capacities in addressing the impact of the disasters and in transforming structures that have made them vulnerable to disasters. CBDRM gives primacy to building the capacities of people and communities in four aspects/processes – disaster prevention and mitigation, disaster preparedness, emergency response, and recovery and rehabilitation.

This chapter focuses on experiences and lessons of selected communities, people’s organizations, and NGOs in the Philippines in integrating CBDRM into processes of community development, sustainable agriculture, and participatory governance.

One of the goals of CBDRM is community resilience. This chapter also presents critical reviews of prevailing definitions of resilience and how the practices of grassroots communities and people-led CBDRRM are leading to emerging concepts of community resilience that include people’s initiatives to challenge and transform structures that perpetuate their vulnerability, as well as efforts to promote sustainable development, social justice, and equity.