Marsh, the world’s leading insurance broker and risk advisor and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Marsh & McLennan Companies, today announced that it has joined the United Nations Disaster Risk Reduction Private Sector Partnership to support work aimed at enhancing national and local resilience to disaster.

The Partnership supports the U.N. Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) and seeks to raise awareness of risk management and contingency planning by partnering with leading organizations in the private sector.

As a member, Marsh has signed UNISDR’s “Statement of Commitment,” which pledges the company’s support to UNISDR’s fundamental principles – achieving a substantive reduction in disaster losses; and building resilient nations and communities as an essential condition for sustainable development.

“Marsh’s Public Entity Practice brings together thought leadership globally to share best practices and develop risk management insight for the benefit of our clients,” said Jean Demchak, Global Leader of Marsh’s Public Entity Practice. “Building resilience is a major challenge and we are honored to share this working agenda with UNISDR.

“Marsh is committed to bringing our knowledge of risk management to helping improving the resilience of public entities and managing disasters. We look forward to making a strong contribution towards helping UNISDR save lives and reduce the costs of catastrophic risks.”

More than 200 million people are affected by disasters each year and in 2010 at least 300,000 people died in major disaster events. Annual reported disaster losses now regularly exceed $100 billion.