In a major speech entitled Building Resilience: The Importance of Disaster Risk Reduction, delivered as part of the Hopkins Lecture Series at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, the Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Helen Clark, herself a former prime minister of New Zealand, “announced her plant to double UNDP assistance for disaster reduction over the next five years, as well as add five countries per year to the growing list of potential “champions of disaster resilience. In view of mounting disaster losses, investment in disaster risk reduction needs to be scaled-up exponentially”

In laying out the goals for the increased investment Ms. Clark laid out some sobering statistics: “The UN’s Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) estimates that over the past twenty years 1.3 million people have been killed and 4.4 billion have been affected by disasters caused by natural hazards.  In 2011 alone, almost 30,000 people were killed in 302 disasters, and 206 million people were affected, including 106 million by floods, and sixty million by drought - mainly in the Horn of Africa.”

Ms. Clarke described the work of her agency within the overall Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015, and said: “I see our work in disaster risk reduction being about building fences at the top of cliffs, rather than being content to place ambulances at the bottom. Our overall mission statement is: Empowered Lives, Resilient Nations. That statement speaks to both means and ends. Empowered people can build resilient nations. Investing in disaster risk reduction is an essential component of building such resilience.”