The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, today welcomed the support of East Asia Summit leaders for a joint Indonesia-Australia initiative to help improve regional responses to natural disasters.
The initiative will ensure EAS countries are ready to make a coordinated response to natural disasters.
Ms Gillard said it would help improve information sharing between countries, overcome bottlenecks in providing assistance and allow EAS countries to work more effectively together in disaster responses meaning assistance will get to people affected by natural disasters more quickly.
Australia will also prove $1 million to support a disaster coordination secretariat based in the ASEAN Humanitarian Assistance Centre in Jakarta which will a play key role in implementing the initiative.
The centre will be able to deploy rapid assessment teams to natural disasters to quickly determine what assistance is needed and coordinate the response across EAS countries.
Australia will also provide $8 million to the World Food Programme to help improve emergency preparedness in the region. The funding will increase the pre-positioning of emergency food supplies and help civilian organizations the military work together in emergency operations.
Natural disasters have exacted a heavy toll on EAS member countries, including the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and the earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand this year. EAS members accounted for eight of the world's ten deadliest disasters in 2009 and five of the ten in 2010.
The initiative builds the Prime Minister's commitment at last year's EAS to provide $10 million for a package of practical activities to help strengthen East Asia regional disaster management.
Australian already does significant disaster coordination across the region including working with national broadcasters to develop disaster response plans and improving risk modeling for cyclones, tsunamis and earthquakes.
In the last financial year, the Australian aid program has provided more than $63 million on emergency prevention and preparedness activities in 32 developing countries.