Senator Loren Legarda delivers her keynote address at the Asian Conference on Climate Change and Disaster Resilience, emphasizing the crucial role of anticipatory climate action.

MAKATI CITY – The Climate Change Commission (CCC) and Senator Loren Legarda both emphasized the importance of stronger anticipatory action legislation to strengthen resilience and preparedness against the impacts of climate change and protect vulnerable communities.

In her keynote speech at the Asian Conference on Climate Change and Disaster Resilience, Legarda underscored that policy reforms must shift climate governance from reactive disaster response toward systems that enable early and science-based action, particularly through institutionalized financing and preparedness mechanisms.

“We must tear down the firewall between ‘relief’ and ‘readiness.’ Our national budget has long treated climate finance as a post-mortem expense. We allocate billions for after, but pennies for just before. We need to activate resources for anticipatory use.”

Legarda stressed that legislative innovation must play a central role in advancing anticipatory response, ensuring that communities and other vulnerable groups are better equipped before disasters strike.

“I propose that we move toward a model of 'Conditional Early Action." This means pre-positioning funds in the accounts of local governments—not for rebuilding schools, but for retrofitting them.”

“And we need to recognize that vulnerability is not uniform. Women, indigenous communities, the elderly, the PWDs, and those in geographically isolated areas face differentiated and compounded risks. Anticipatory finance must be redesigned to reach them first and not last,” Legarda said.

CCC Vice Chairperson and Executive Director Robert E.A. Borje also emphasized that anticipatory climate action means that we should not think about how often we can rebuild, but how we rarely are destroyed.

“We must stop building and rebuilding the same risks over and over again. We must build right at first sight. Instead of repeatedly building after being destroyed, we need to invest right from the start. With best available science and data-driven planning, we can plan and implement well, ensuring that every peso spent reduces and does not reinforce risk,” Borje said.

A long-time climate champion, Legarda authored key pieces of legislation that form the backbone of the country’s climate and disaster risk governance, including the Climate Change Act of 2009, the Philippine Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Act of 2010, and the People’s Survival Fund Act.

The conference convened representatives from government agencies, academic institutions, the private sector, and civil society. International development organizations – including the Embassy of France, World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and regional DRM practitioners – were also present to exchange insights and advance collaboration on climate finance, policy coherence, and resilience-building efforts across Asia.

Carrying the theme “From Risk to Readiness: Investing in Climate Futures in Asia,” the event aimed to strengthen partnerships and mobilize investments that support climate-resilient development.

For more information on the CCC’s climate mainstreaming activities, visit www.climate.gov.ph and www.facebook.com/CCCPhl.