Addressing the combined challenges posed by climate change, degradation of water resources and climate or other natural hazards will require planned interventions to encourage adaptation , reduce disaster risk and improve water resource management . Planned adaptation interventions will, however, be insufficient. Communities, households, businesses and other entities are continuously changing and adapting to the risks and hazards they perceive within wider processes of economic and social change. Such autonomous processes of adaptation are likely to occur at a much larger scale than planned interventions. As a result, effective strategies for adapting to climate change and reducing disaster risk will also require support for adaptive processes emerging autonomously within communities, households and other entities. Such processes are likely to point in very different directions from historical patterns of development and may force regions to re-envision approaches to everything from water management to regional development. Because many of the impacts of climate change will take the form of increases in disaster risks, strategies for risk reduction will, of necessity, play a central role in climate adaptation. In order for national governments and international organizations to invest in such strategies the costs and benefits of disaster risk reduction must be clearly understood. Given the scale of the issues involved and the fact that many of the strategies are emergent properties within livelihood systems, financial mechanisms for supporting both planned and autonomous forms of adaptation will also be a critical issue. Weather, climate and other information issues will also need to be addressed in order to support adaptation and risk reduction. While the global impacts of climate change are increasingly well understood, the way these will transform risks and vulnerability at local levels aren’t. Understanding risk within local contexts will require new ways of using and interpreting climate, weather and water and other forms of information. Finally, the complex nature of risk and adaptive processes will require new alliances between scientists, communities and disciplines.