EDITORIAL — Highest disaster risk

Here’s another global ranking where the country takes the worst spot: out of the 193 member states of the United Nations, the Philippines again ranks first as the most vulnerable to disasters.

In the 2026 World Risk Index, the Philippines retained its 2025 ranking as the country with the highest disaster risk, ahead of India, Indonesia, Colombia and Mexico.

Drawn up by the Bündnis Entwicklung Hilft and the Institute for International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict at Ruhr University Bochum in Germany, the rankings are based on exposure and vulnerability to extreme natural events.

There’s not much to be done about exposure. The Philippines sits not only along the Pacific Ring of Fire with active volcanoes and earthquake faults, but also along the Pacific typhoon belt, often serving as a regional welcome mat for tropical cyclones from the Pacific Ocean.

The report noted that the country is set apart from others by high scores on five out of seven hazard types: storms, earthquakes, tsunamis, coastal flood and sea-level rise.

But intervention is possible in the other indicator for the rankings: structural vulnerability, which assesses a country’s social susceptibility and capacities for coping with natural disasters. These include poverty-related vulnerabilities, the quality of public infrastructure and population density in hazard-prone areas.

Studies have also consistently shown the Philippines to be among the most vulnerable to climate change. As in the World Risk Index, this vulnerability is assessed not only in terms of exposure to global warming, but also the measures being undertaken to minimize the vulnerability.

Unfortunately for the country, social susceptibilities are aggravated by the problems we are now seeing in the corruption scandal involving flood control and other public works projects.

Instead of building for resilience, even new bridges on their dry run are collapsing from the weight of one truck, while older concrete bridges are washed away by floods.

Government officials are busy lining their pockets with kickbacks and public funds intended for flood control. The national budget is designed by lawmakers and executive officials to aid in their reelection or perpetuation of dynasties, through their personal use of an ever-expanding range of dole-out or ayuda programs.

Unless this situation is addressed, the nation will keep that worst spot in the World Risk Index for many more years to come.