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Over the last decade, the development community has begun to recognize the potentially important role of local governance in risk reduction in developing countries. While much has been written about this emerging paradigm (later in this issue Aman Mehta outlines effective local governance in disaster management), few examples have been brought to bear in the literature. Here we present a successful case.

The case of Carmen serves as an example to local government units around the Philippines and Asia-Pacific that with the right combination of administrative structures, institutional capacity building, and coordination with centralized agencies, input from the local level into large-scale disaster management projects can lead to successful mitigation of disasters.

In January 1996 the Local Government Unit (LGU) of Carmen, in the province of Davao del Norte, on the southern island of Mindanao, took an innovative step in addressing disaster mitigation at the local government level. Led by the municipality's department head of Social Welfare and Development, a LGU delegation met with regional officers of central government agencies, including the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), the National Irrigation Agency (NIA) as well as the Provincial Engineering Office, in order to discuss how to integrate Carmen's disaster mitigation needs into central government projects. A series of such consultations with the agencies resulted in the Carmen Comprehensive Drainage System, which includes schemes for re-channeling and widening of a river, widening channels along the national highway, and constructing dikes in the flood zone of Carmen. Coordination benefited all parties through avoiding duplication of work and saving resources. But such coordination is a departure from the traditional development planning process of LGUs in the Philippines. How then, did this initiative come about?

Government Legislation for Disaster Management at the LGU Level

The Local Government Code of 1991, or Republic Act 7160, decentralized the power of resource allocation from the central government to the municipal and even community level for development and disaster relief. The Local Government Code established an unprecedented legal provision for the allocation of disaster funding by the municipal and community levels. Sections 287 and 324d mandate a 5% allocation for disaster relief from a 20% development budget taken from the annual Internal Revenue Allotment. This portion of revenue is designed to be used only for expenditures arising from the occurrence of a disaster, in areas of a local government unit that the president has declared to be in a "state of calamity." Additional legislation of 1989 helped to elevate the role that Municipal and Regional Disaster Coordinating Councils should play in approving the Calamity and Disaster Preparedness Plans authored by local governments, but gave these councils little operating power, and no resources. Rather, the power to approve allocation of funds for disaster preparedness lay in the Provincial Disaster Coordinating Councils. Since, the municipal DCCs had little authority or voice in the local planning process, most LGUs didn't bother to keep them up and running.

Innovative Administrative Structures

The case of Carmen illustrates how LGUs deal with situations for which government procedures offer little guidance: in this case the generic problem of flood management, i.e. disaster mitigation. For Carmen, one of the small municipalities in a region prone to flooding, mitigating floods has traditionally been left to the provincial extension offices of the central government. The municipality itself has resources for flood relief and reconstruction; but not for mitigation. The LGU's obstacle to being directly involved in the mitigation of floods has been in the acquisition of resources, either directly from its budget, or indirectly from regional agencies. In order to address resource constraints, the Mayor of Carmen increased the capacity of the Municipal Disaster Coordinating Council (MDCC), as a platform for administration of disaster management. The MDCC council set an action plan and allocated a budget for disaster management during the coming year, for which funds were drawn from the Development Fund and the National Calamity Fund. The MDCC allocated funds from both sources on the basis that Carmen experiences at least one major flood each year, and therefore will most likely experience floods in the coming year; yet resources were given from the National Calamity Fund under the premise of rehabilitation of flood-stricken areas.

Institutional Capacity Building

Municipalities in the Philippines need to recognize the potential role of the MDCC in disaster management as a part of local development › at present many simply convene the council when a disaster strikes. But the municipality of Carmen, specifically the Mayor, places great importance on the MDCC as a platform for addressing all disaster management issues. In fact, Carmen's MDCC is one of a handful of such local councils with 25% membership from the non-government and private sectors, as mandated by the Local Government Code. This example of strong local governance in disaster mitigation is due in part to the institutional capacity building supported by the Mindanao Network for Disaster Response (MNDR). MNDR is a branch of the Corporate Network for Disaster Response, a private association working on disaster management in the Philippines (see June 1997 Asian Disaster Management News). In the case of Carmen, MNDR is the implementing organization for USAID's Bayanihan Program, discussed in the box to the left. Through discussions and training focussed on disaster preparedness, mitigation and prevention, Carmen's LGU realized the need to reorganize the MDCC in order to foster a more consultative, proactive and multi-sectoral approach to disaster management. Members of Carmen's LGU participated in the April 1996 Training of Trainers in Disaster Management course, while the Mayor Cuarenta himself participated in a workshop, both events organized by ADPC. ADPC has provided technical consulting services to the Bayanihan program.

This article is based on a research trip undertaken by the author in January 1998 to the municipality of Carmen, Davao del Norte, in partial fulfillment of her master's course from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.