[As Prepared]

Hon. Leopoldo Dominico Petilla, Hon. Joey Salceda, Hon. Carlo Loreto, Hon. Remedios Petilla, Members of the Provincial Board, friends from the media, ladies and gentlemen: Magandang umaga sa inyong lahat.

On behalf of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), I would like to congratulate the Provincial Government of Leyte for the newly established Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office that will be inaugurated today. It is an honor to be here with you to celebrate this milestone as you work towards a climate resilient Leyte.

By working to better prepare for natural disasters and the impacts of climate change, we can increase the already high level of resilience among Filipinos to these risks. Climate-resilient development minimizes costs and consequences of climate impacts so they do not hinder progress toward our shared development goals.

Here in the Philippines, the U.S. Embassy’s, office of the United States Agency for International Development we are supporting climate change adaptation under several projects, including the Water Security for Resilient Economic Growth and Stability or Be Secure project.

Today’s inauguration of the Leyte Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office was supported by the twinning program between Leyte and Albay provinces. This forms part of our commitment to help the Philippines better prepared for natural disasters and become more climate resilient.

I want to thank Albay Province for their support of this partnership and especially Gov. Salceda for being a leader in disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation initiatives across the Philippines.

Even though we are officially inaugurating the office today, the PDRRMO was up and running in December as Leyte prepared for Typhoon Ruby. I commend the PDRRMO staff on what I have been told is their excellent work preparing for the storm. We are happy that they will have a new office from which to work, and we wish them the best with the challenging mandate they have undertaken.

Maraming Salamat po.