Makati bags city sharing initiative award from Citynet

Makati City won the City-to-City Cooperation Award for its implementation of the World Bank-funded Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery South-South Cooperation Program, which was given by CityNet during the celebration of its 25th anniversary at Surabaya, Indonesia last July 11.

Makati Mayor Jejomar Erwin S. Binay expressed his gratitude to CityNet for recognizing the city government's commitment to making the country's financial center disaster resilient.

"We are very thankful and honored to receive this award from CityNet, more so because it was given as part of its celebration of 25 years of worthy existence," Binay said.

The mayor said that the city sharing program was an effective approach to attaining a "disaster resilient Makati" and noted that the partner-cities have produced model templates on zoning ordinance, emergency operations plan and public awareness campaign, which they intend to share with other local governments.

"Makati, together with Quito and Kathmandu, are now knowledge and resource centers on disaster risk reduction and management, and should share our outputs and models with other local governments so that they can also enhance their resiliency against disasters," Binay said.

Mayor Binay is the 2nd Vice President of CityNet while Makati City is the head of the city network's Disaster Cluster. Makati has been a member of CityNet for 12 years since 1990.

Senior Adviser to the mayor Atty. Violeta Seva accepted the award for Makati City. She said that the city was honored to be recognized along with Quito and Kathmandu for raising awareness for strategies to reduce to disaster risk reduction. "We are now ready to share this model with cities around the world," she said.

Also given recognition by CityNet were Seoul (South Korea) for participating actively in city sharing aimed at enhancing disaster resiliency and mitigation practices; Yokohama (Japan) was given the "Impact" Award for demonstrating concrete results in the level of local communities; and Surabaya (Indonesia) the Award for Tomorrow in recognition of its high potential in upscaling and expansion of it resiliency projects.

Recently, the third and final leg of the GFDDR City-to-City Sharing Initiative (C2CSI) was concluded with a Study Visit and Residency Training at Makati City where delegates from Quito, Ecuador and Kathmandu, Nepal came to the city for further exchanges of best practices in disaster resiliency initiatives.

The model templates have been formulated with the assistance of Disaster Risk Management, Emergency Management, Land Use Planning, and Knowledge Management specialists. The city outputs have expanded from Risk Sensitive Land Use Planning and Risk Sensitive Zoning Ordinance, Emergency Operations Plan and Public Awareness Campaign templates to include the Sound Practices and Roster of Resource Persons.

The peer-to-peer collaboration sessions also yielded more projects for implementation such as the GIS Atlas, Building Code Enforcement Guidelines, and Guidance Note on the Establishment of Community Emergency Response Team. The series of Study Visits and Residency Training were held in Quito last November 2011, in Kathmandu in February 2012, and in Makati last April 2012.

The GFDRR South-South Cooperation Program facilitates collaboration among low- and middle-income countries in mainstreaming disaster risk reduction, recovery and climate adaptation measures into development planning. The Program fosters leadership and ownership among developing countries with regard to their disaster risk reduction agenda, thereby providing opportunities for high-risk countries to work jointly, on their common objective of reducing vulnerabilities.

The program follows the 10 Essentials for Making Cities Resilient derived from the Five Priorities of the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015. The 10 Essentials would serve as guide and self-assessment tool of mayors and local governments in reducing vulnerabilities and become more disaster resilient. The 10 Essentials, developed by the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR), was piloted in Makati City to test its effectiveness, know the challenges and seek for areas of improvement. Makati, Kathmandu and Quito are all members of the "Making Cities Resilient Campaign: My City is Getting Ready!" of UNISDR.

CityNet, with headquarters in Yokohama, Japan, was formed in 1987 and has more than 100 member-cities in over 20 countries. It has facilitated more than 500 exchanges among local governments and organizations in the Asia-Pacific region. CityNet is a member-driven organization that works toward solving the common challenges encountered by cities in making the environment livable, sustainable and healthy. The City-to-City Cooperation Award is given to the best sharing and cooperation program among cities and local governments to emphasize such practices. - makati.gov.ph — ARA