By Luigi Toda and Perlyn Pulhin

As funder for this year’s PARR Fellowship Program in the Philippines, the OML Center welcomes the two Fellows from Indonesia to the Manila Observatory (MO) last November 18 and December 6, 2014. With this year’s theme Urban Disaster Risk and Vulnerability Under Global Environmental Change (GEC), the Pan-Asia Risk Reduction (PARR) Fellowship Program brings together the Research and Practice-Policy Fellows to the Philippines for a one-month fellowship residency in University of the Philippines – Los Baños (UPLB) and MO.

The MO Fellows, namely Dr. Saut Aritua Sagala (Science Fellow) and Mr. Resfaniarto Indraka (Policy Fellow) of the School of Architecture, Planning and Policy Development, Institute of Technology Bandung (ITB) and Indonesia Association of Planners (IAP), respectively, will be supervised by various experts from the Manila Observatory. Mr. Resfaniarto will stay in Manila between November 19 and December 18 (30 days) while Dr. Sagala’s fellowship will run in separate periods, from December 6 to 18 and from January 20 to 27 (21 days).

The fellowship aims to develop a policy paper that will examine the factors related to the increasing of vulnerability and risks such as the role of leadership and policy in risk governance and to bring important lessons learned between Greater Jakarta (Indonesia) and Metro Manila (Philippines). Specifically, the study will assess the main challenges faced by Greater Jakarta and Metro Manila in terms of the development of vulnerability and risks, the extent to which recent leadership and policy changes in Jakarta influence the disaster risk reduction policy, and the impact of the relationship and coordination among the municipalities in Greater Jakarta in urban planning and spatial distribution of risks.

Last October 15, 2014, the fellows from Malaysia Ms. Nurfashareena Muhamad and Mr. Md. Azizul Bari completed their program hosted by the UPLB.