Manila, Philippines — As disasters become more frequent, complex, and interconnected, ASEAN is moving beyond a traditional response-oriented approach to disaster management, recognizing resilience as fundamental to regional peace, security, prosperity, and sustainable development.
Across Southeast Asia, climate, development, and security are not separate challenges. Disasters and climate impacts do not stop at national borders, and their consequences can quickly spread across the region.
ASEAN is one of the world’s most disaster-prone regions. A flood in one country can disrupt supply chains across borders. Drought can affect food prices and livelihoods. Damage to ports, energy systems and telecommunications can ripple through regional economies. Climate pressures can also deepen inequality, displacement, and competition over shared resources.
These realities make disaster resilience a regional priority. For ASEAN, reducing disaster risk is not only about protecting communities from hazards. It is also about protecting economic stability, food and water security, critical infrastructure, and the region’s shared prosperity.
The need for regional solidarity is made clear whenever disaster strikes. Department of National Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr., in a recent TV interview, expressed appreciation for the support and solidarity extended by ASEAN Member States following the recent earthquakes and cyclones that affected the Philippines. “We share a lot of person-to-person relationships with our ASEAN neighbors, particularly in disasters.” Secretary Teodoro reaffirms the Philippines’ strong commitment to ASEAN centrality emphasizing that ASEAN must remain at the core of regional peace and security efforts. “We are fully committed in all our initiatives to working with our Member States to implement all the initiatives that we adopt today for the security of our people and our region,” Teodoro said at the 19th ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting in Kuala Lumpur in November 2025.
The ASEAN Ministerial Conference on Disaster Resilience, to be convened under the Philippines’ 2026 Chairship of ASEAN, will bring together ASEAN Member States and partners to take stock of two decades of regional cooperation under the ASEAN Agreement on Disaster Management and Emergency Response (AADMER) and chart the next generation of disaster resilience.
The conference comes at a critical moment. ASEAN is entering the implementation period of the AADMER Work Programme 2026–2030, while the international community moves toward the final years of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030. Together, these frameworks provide an opportunity to accelerate the shift from managing disasters to managing risk—through stronger risk knowledge, early warning, prevention, preparedness, resilient recovery, and sustained investment in resilience.
ASEAN has built a strong foundation for collective action. AADMER, which entered into force in 2009, provides the region’s policy framework for disaster management and emergency response, while the ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on Disaster Management (AHA Centre) serves as its operational engine. The region has progressively strengthened cooperation across prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery under the principle of One ASEAN, One Response.
The Philippines is seeking to build on this foundation during its 2026 ASEAN Chairship under the theme “Navigating Our Future, Together.” The theme reflects the need for collective action in a region facing increasingly interconnected risks, while advancing ASEAN’s shared commitment to peace, prosperity, and people.
The Philippines brings particular experience to this agenda. As one of the world’s most disaster-exposed countries, it has increasingly transformed its approach from reactive response toward anticipatory action, risk-informed planning and investment, stronger early warning, localized preparedness, and resilient recovery.
The experience of Typhoon Haiyan in 2013, together with repeated exposure to typhoons, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, and droughts, has reinforced a fundamental lesson: preparedness and prevention are not simply humanitarian priorities. They are investments in national and regional stability.
This evolution is transforming the Philippines’ approach to disaster risk reduction. The new Republic Act No. 12287, or the Declaration of State of Imminent Disaster Act, strengthens the country’s capacity to act before disasters strike by providing a legal framework for anticipatory measures based on forecasts and pre-disaster risk assessments. It enables government to mobilize resources and undertake proactive measures ahead of an imminent disaster, helping shift the focus from responding to impacts to reducing risks before they materialize.
Strengthened early warning and anticipatory action, empowered local governments, risk-informed investments, nature-based and engineered solutions, and stronger public-private partnerships are helping build a more proactive model of resilience.
As the Special Envoy to the President on Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Maria Antonia Yulo Loyzaga says, “Climate security poses complex and dynamic challenges to ASEAN. These risks are systemic, cutting across sectors, scales, and geographies.”
For the Philippines, these experiences provide practical lessons that can contribute to ASEAN’s efforts to address increasingly complex, cascading, and transboundary risks. The Philippine experience underscores the importance of regional solidarity. During major disasters, ASEAN neighbors have provided humanitarian assistance, logistics, expertise, and emergency support. A disaster may begin within one country, but its consequences can cross borders and so can resilience.
The Ministerial Conference will therefore look beyond emergency response toward a more comprehensive model that connects science and early warning with early action; disaster risk reduction with climate adaptation; recovery with long-term development; and local resilience with regional cooperation.
It will also emphasize that regional solutions must have local roots. Communities, local governments, civil society, scientists, the private sector, and other stakeholders are essential to translating regional commitments into practical resilience on the ground.
The AADMER Work Programme 2026–2030 provides an important vehicle for this transformation, strengthening ASEAN’s capacity to anticipate and reduce risk while advancing financing, resource mobilization, partnerships, innovation, inclusion, and institutionalization.
As ASEAN navigates an increasingly uncertain future, the Philippines is advancing disaster resilience as an integral part of the region’s broader architecture of peace, security, and prosperity.
The message is clear: ASEAN cannot prevent every typhoon, earthquake, drought or flood. But through science, preparedness, cooperation, and shared responsibility, it can determine whether these hazards become regional crises—or opportunities to strengthen solidarity and resilience.
Under the Philippines’ Chairship, “Navigating Our Future, Together” means ensuring that ASEAN is not only prepared to respond to disasters, but equipped to anticipate risk, protect its people and economies, and build a safer, more resilient future together.
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