When satellites recorded drought conditions in Ethiopia last year, for example, more than 12,000 farmers received a total of $322,772£200,0000) in payouts through the R4 Rural Resilience Initiative, one of the new crop of programmes combining "index insurance" with climate adaptation work in developing countries.
In January, it was revealed that environment secretary Owen Paterson, widely regarded as a climate sceptic, has cut his department's funding for climate change adaptation work by almost half.
Australia committed to establishing the world's largest and most comprehensive network of marine reserves, and significantly increasing its funding for other country's marine and climate change adaptation work in the Pacific.
She says that finding funds to support climate change adaptation work is an uphill battle for several reasons, including the fact that many agencies are each doing a piece of the climate change work.
A study by the Economics of Climate Adaptation (ECA) working group found that losses due to climate change could reach up to 19% of GDP in some parts of the world by 2030.
While the city's climate adaptation program works with engineers and consultants on quantifying and minimizing flood risks, officials are also engaged in a vigorous public relations effort.
Under this scenario, large contracts for climate change adaptation works in developing countries might have been awarded by the fund to international companies rather than to host governments.
Others at the climate summit criticized the U.S. and other developed nations for not putting more money into the Green Climate Fund, a pool of money created in 2009 to direct $100 billion to climate mitigation and adaptation work in poorer countries.
The Center for Resilient Cities and Landscapes is allied with the Earth Institute's Climate Adaptation Initiative to work across the disciplines at Columbia University by bridging design with science and policy with the goal of improving the capacity of people and places to adapt to emerging challenges.
The agency's Climate Adaptation Science Investigators working group, which evaluates risks for all federal agencies, has predicted that sea level rise of five inches to more than two feet by 2050 could cause widespread problems for the five coastal NASA sites.
There is a golden opportunity now to ensure coherence between these agreements so that climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction work together to strengthen resilience across the full range of environmental, technological and biological hazards.
