The United Nations Development Programme is upping the ante by making disaster risk reduction central to development activities, including doubling UNDP disaster reduction assistance over the next five years.

The commitment to increasing disaster resilience was announced last week in an address by UNDP head Helen Clark in Christchurch, New Zealand. That speech emphasized the need for collaboration between humanitarian and development agencies, as well as investment in protecting populations from disaster.

“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,” she said.

The extra funding will correspond with a new phase in disaster risk reduction, as well. With the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction’s Hyogo Framework for Action set to wrap up in 2015, UNISDR is planning for the next chapter in creating global disaster resilience (to see how you can contribute, see the Callouts section below).

“UNDP and other UN agencies have an important role to play in mainstreaming disaster risk reduction into their day-to-day development work and that experience is very important to the debate now underway among member States on a new international instrument for disaster risk reduction,” UNISDR head Margareta Wahlström told the UN News Service. “It will be a major feature of next year's Global Platform on Disaster Risk Reduction.”

Investment in disaster reduction is not only “cost effective and smart development,” Clark told her Christchurch audience, it’s also imperative to development strategies. Because the gains made by development are so easily be undone by disaster, they should be intrinsic to the foundation of growth, she said.

“In view of mounting disaster losses, investment in disaster risk reduction needs to be scaled-up exponentially.”