As head of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Helen Clark is arguably the most powerful woman in the entire UN system.

The former New Zealand prime minister took over the reins at the world body's global development network last April, the first woman to do so.

Today, the affable and self-assured New Zealander oversees an annual UNDP budget of six billion dollars and a global army of thousands of highly motivated people tasked with spearheading the UN drive to achieve eight poverty-reduction Millennium Development Goals by 2015.

"I was looking for a new challenge commensurate with what I had been doing," she told AFP in an interview Tuesday in her spacious New York office with a breathtaking view over the East river.

"When I heard that this job was being advertised, I sounded out various people and they said: 'Have a go, you would be terrific,'" Clark (59) added.

"I was the only person who came forward with my sort of skills," she said.

Key to rolling back poverty

"As prime minister, I got very involved in the Pacific, the primary focus of New Zealand's development program. I have been involved with leaders of developing countries probably to a greater extent than most (other) western leaders."

Wearing a red jacket and black slacks, she explained that her organization's strategy is focused on crisis prevention and recovery; good governance; poverty reduction and last but not least climate change adaptation.

"Forty percent of all investment in development is vulnerable to climate change," she noted.

And the key to rolling back poverty is "capacity building, institution building," she said, citing the old adage: "You don't give a man a fish, you give a man a rod."

Clark does not subscribe to the notion that UNDP and the donor community in general have failed "the bottom billion," the world's poorest people.

"I look at development from an Asia-Pacific perspective and what I see in east Asia is that hundreds of millions of people have been brought out of poverty through a focus on growth and trade.

Obama's administration to double assistance

"The trick for me is to take that focus and combine it with the human development side of the equation. The rising tide has to lift everyone, particularly those at the bottom of the ladder."

Clark said that despite the financial crisis, development aid commitments from countries such as Britain, Spain and Australia remain strong.

And she welcomes the fact that US President Barack Obama's administration has pledged to double official development assistance (ODA) by 2015.

"When I was in Ethiopia in June I was told that Indian investment had gone from a very few hundreds million dollars four, five years ago to $4.5-billion today.

Investment is part of what's going to drive growth and development," she said. She conceded that many countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, are off track to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by the 2015 deadline.

The goals include eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combating diseases such as HIV/AIDS, ensuring environmental sustainability and creating global partnerships for development.

Promoting women's empowerment

"I'd like to see everybody achieve something," the ex-prime minister said. She also underscored the importance of promoting women's empowerment in all areas of life, including agriculture.

"Seventy percent of Africa's farmers are women... if we can lift the status of women economically through education there's going to be consequences that are positive right through the chain."

Asked what sort of legacy she would like to leave behind at the end of her four-year term, she said: "I would like to be remembered by an absolute focus on the development tide lifting everybody, so a focus on the poorest being able to benefit."

And she wants climate change adaptation to be at the top of the agenda as well.

"We are told that a person in the developing world is 79 times more likely to be affected by a climate-related disaster than someone in the developed world," Clark said.

"We have to bring (climate change) into the center of how we think, how we develop our agriculture, how we conserve our water, where our people live, what protections can be put in place, how we rethink development strategies."