Prepared for a policy roundtable, hosted by Swiss Re and The International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) at the innaugural meeting of the Global Humanitarian Forum in Geneva, June 24, 2008. This paper is a policy distillation adapted from IRI Technical Report 07-03 Working Paper – Poverty Traps and Climate Risk: Limitations and Opportunities of Index-Based Risk Financing, Barrett, C.B.; B.J. Barnett; M.R. Carter; S. Chantarat; J.W. Hansen; A.G. Mude ; D.E. Osgood; J.R. Skees; C.G. Turvey; M.N. Ward, 2007.