Keynote Speech of Senator Loren Legarda | Asian Conference on Climate Change and Disaster Resilience (ACCCDR) | April 30, 2026 | Fuller Hall, AIM Campus, Makati City

Distinguished guests from the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the Climate Change Commission, and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas; representatives from our most climate-vulnerable cities; ladies and gentlemen, fellow advocates, good morning.

It is both an honor and a moment of reflection to join you again at the Asian Institute of Management. Three years ago, I delivered the keynote address at this very conference.

Back then, I spoke of an “existential threat,” of how the era of global warming had given way to an era of “global boiling,” as UN Secretary-General António Guterres called it. Rising sea levels, intensifying typhoons, longer droughts, and the specter of widespread agricultural collapse. On February 28 this year, that collapse took on a greater measure of inevitability. It introduced an element that speeds up the climate feedback loops considerably so that disasters will now only exacerbate the coming food crises that will result from the global unavailability of fertilizers and the destruction of fossil fuel facilities.

Across the Asia-Pacific, from the Mekong Delta to the Pacific Islands, we are witnessing a convergence of risks– climate volatility, economic exposure and uneven fiscal capacity. What differs is not the nature of the threat but the ability to anticipate and absorb it.

For decades, we have operated within a cycle of trauma and repair. A typhoon hits. A river swells. A community is washed away. We see the images on our screens, we are moved
enough to mobilize hot kitchens, community pantries, relief and rescue, and then… we wait for the next disaster.

We rebuild. But too often, we rebuild into the same risks. This is the status quo. It reflects not only a failure of policy and imagination but a deeper structural misalignment between how risk unfolds in real-time and how finance is released in response.

The paper you have circulated speaks of a dangerous “First-Mile/Last-Mile” disconnect. Global funds exist. National policies exist. But by the time the bureaucracy catches up to the reality on the ground, the window to prevent loss has closed. We have become experts in counting the dead and repairing the broken, but we have not yet mastered the art of anticipating the blow.

This disconnect is critical. It is the space where dreams are shattered and lives are lost. Not because the Philippines lacks resources but because we release those resources too late. Therefore, this is my challenge to you, and my promise to our people: We must legislate for anticipation.

First: Legislative Innovation.

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.

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; not for buying coffins, but for buying early warning systems and portable food reserves.

Why? Because the most cost-effective decision is often the earliest one – the choice to build right before the risk fully materializes. We need a budget amendment that allows the Department of Budget and Management to disburse disaster funds based on a forecast, not just a declaration of a state of calamity.

Second: Protecting the Vulnerable.

Fiscal policy is meaningless if it does not reach the mother packing her children into a tricycle to flee a flooding home.

We must simplify the trigger mechanisms for local aid. If the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) predicts a storm surge of a certain magnitude, the cash transfer should be automatic.

We need to embed anticipatory action into the Conditional Cash Transfer program. Give families the liquidity to evacuate early, to buy their own emergency kits, to store their own rice, and survive unscathed and with dignity.

And we need to recognize that 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.

Third: A Call to Mayors and Development Partners.

To the representatives of our local governments here today: You are the first responders. Do not wait for a memorandum or a declaration of climate emergency. If your Annual Investment Plans do not assume extreme climate events and economic shocks, revise. If your infrastructure plans assume that things will always be normal, pivot to nature-based solutions as soon as possible.

To our friends from the ADB and the World Bank: We need to buckle down to an honest to goodness assessment of past lending patterns and whether the projects make us more vulnerable or less so. If we are serious about resilience, then our financing, both the loans and the GAA, must stop restoring risk and finally start reducing it. You can do this by providing grants and highly concessional loans for climate and disaster risk finance and insurance and other trigger-based risk transfer mechanisms, such as parametric insurance that pays out when the wind reaches 120 kilometers per hour, and not six months later after a damage assessment. You will be investing in moving people, assets and systems out of harm’s way.

Resilience is also financial. It is about liquidity. It is about the speed of the peso moving from the national treasury to a local barangay before the storm makes landfall. Central banks, regulators, and development finance institutions mustn’t treat anticipatory action as a social expenditure. It is an exercise in risk management; it protects macroeconomic stability, reduces financial shocks, safeguards long-term growth, and is a step towards genuine climate justice.

Anticipatory finance is more than just acting early; it is about making. The right investments early so that risk is reduced at the point of design and not after failure. It is strategically making investments in disaster ready infrastructure, and making sure that when we invest a Trillion Pesos in highways, we do not spend the same amount in lost natural capital and instead invest just as heavily in ensuring the resilience of the ecosystems that will see us through.

As we speak of systems, finance, and infrastructure, we must also speak of the hands that will build them. We are not just investing in grids and sea walls; we are investing in a generation that refuses to accept the status quo of vulnerability.

This was vividly clear during the recently concluded Philippine Resilience Awards, where we honored young Filipinos who are not waiting for the “First-Mile/Last-Mile” gap to close—they are bridging it themselves.

Look at the stories of our youth winners. We see young leaders like Vince Alvic Pajenado from Northern Samar, who witnessed the devastation of Typhoon Ambo and turned that trauma into action by mobilizing youth-led disaster preparedness and mangrove reforestation. We see the brilliance of the Mindanao State University – Iligan Institute of Technology team, who developed “Project SIGNAL,” using technology to ensure communication remains unbroken when the worst storms hit.

We see young environmental defenders like Zhaun Astrud Ortega in Davao, championing the protection of our watersheds and urban forests, proving that resilience starts with the health of our ecosystems.

We also expect our scholars at AIM for the course in Executive Master in Disaster Risk and Crisis Management, and Master of Science in Data Science will yield innovative and strategic pivots to face an ecological renewal. If anything, they should have learned not to waste a good crisis.

These young Filipinos represent a different kind of “energy pivot.” While we rightly discuss the transition to renewable energy sources—the shift from coal to solar, wind, and geothermal—we must also recognize the human energy of our youth as our most potent renewable resource.

Disaster risk reduction must go beyond technical engineering; it must be a social investment. To truly move from risk to readiness, we must invest in the energies and capacities of our youth. They have the innovation to design the early warning systems of tomorrow, the passion to lead their communities to higher ground, and the moral clarity to demand that we act now, not later. Let us give them first crack at the People’s Survival Funds, and let them lose on the opportunities our PENCAS law opened up. I authored these two measures thinking that first and foremost, it will be the youth that will push them forward as the new architects of our preparedness and resilience.

Preparedness is measured by what we prevent from being lost and not by what we rebuild after. It is the discipline and rigor of building right at first sight so that resilience is designed into our systems.

The climate crisis is here, and it is intense. But so is our resolve. Let us continue to work together for the climate—for life, livelihood, and the future of every Filipino.

Maraming salamat po. Isang luntiang Pilipinas sa ating lahat!