Disaster Preparedness and Climate Change

We can see foreign social scientists crisscrossing our archipelago doing research on the Philippines. It has been like this since the arrival of the western powers and up to this day wherein we leave the burden of the search for indigenous knowledge and wisdom to the foreign scholars. Setting the foreign researchers’ feat aside, doing social science research with this type of result in view is an insurmountable task that has been adequately accomplished by the team of faculty members from the University of Southeastern Philippines and Davao Oriental State College of Science and Technology with the generous support of Senator Loren Legarda. From the first four pages bearing the introduction, it can be deduced right away that this manuscript is a product of an exciting fieldwork and rigorous ethnography –a commendable endeavor indeed. Reassuringly, I am making it clear that this breakthrough research should be continued for it is time that the local academia must take into its hands the thrust of documenting and preserving indigenous knowledge systems within its geographical vicinity. The familiarity and the proximity of the academic communities with the indigenous communities do not only project the idea of awareness, but also the degree of interest and intellectual curiosity that will facilitate in the tapping of the indispensable communities for the enhancement of the existing education policies, research agenda, and pedagogical endeavors among others. With the great merits this book has and the use of English language in its text, I am sure that this book will not be only used in the local academic communities, but it will find its way into the many libraries and university holdings in the country and abroad.