The necessary research alone will take time and should be a priority  There are significant research challenges that need to be addressed in terms of envisaging what an adaptation regime would look like. For example how adaptation would tie into to other types of change – social, economic, demographic, etc. Answering these questions, alone, will take time but are a necessary precursor to building a realistic adaptation routine [i] .  The urgency here comes from the fact that it will take time to establish new systems to work on this at an international level. One of the difficulties demonstrated by the experience of initial studies of climate change was that it needed to be conducted on a global scale, frequently involving complex and expensive modeling systems. There are several backstages to establishing this and the majority of relevant academics are currently working on prevention models rather than designing an entire new framework of prediction.  Developing such frameworks will require the focus of governments, in terms of research funding policies and agreeing enforcement and delivery models.  Given the choice between building a framework that can work and focussing on one that hasn’t, the choice seems to be fairly obvious [ii] .  [i] National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility website.   [ii] See also the UN site here