As aid groups fight to keep money in the federal budget to help poor countries deal with climate change disasters, many advocates say the devastating earthquake-tsunami-nuclear trifecta in Japan raises serious questions about how much even rich countries can do to protect themselves from catastrophe.

After all, if Japan -- the globe's third largest economy with world-class infrastructure and the financial resources to absorb catastrophes -- can be so walloped by Mother Nature, what chance does a poverty-stricken country have?

"Japan is probably more ready for an earthquake and a tsunami than any other country on Earth, and in spite of their readiness, there's only so much you can do when the big one hits. Adaptation can only get you so far," said Heather McGray, a senior associate with the World Resources Institute.

The Japan tsunami, triggered by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake, is not linked to climate change. But the kind of havoc it wreaked, advocates said, helps to visualize the kinds of challenges scientists say rising sea levels, fiercer cyclones and storms could have.

Someone's Mickey Mouse doll hangs amid the debris of tsunami-swept houses in Ofunato, Japan. Photo courtesy Flickr.

Bangladesh, for example, topped a recent World Bank list of countries most at risk of flooding. The study found increasing glacial melt from the Himalayan ranges could raise the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers to flood 30 to 70 percent of the country each year. Vietnam, meanwhile, could lose 16 percent of its landmass, 35 percent of its population and 35 percent of its GDP if hit hard by sea-level rise.

Unlike Japan, those countries and others at high risk often have poor infrastructure and limited resources to deal with disaster. Yet even in Japan, the country's meticulous protection system -- like a $1.5 billion, 25-foot seawall in Kamaishi City that the tsunami easily topped to devastate the city -- was no match for the anger of nature.

"It shows that there is a limit to adaptation," said Ilana Solomon, a policy analyst with ActionAid. "A country like Japan has significant resources and significant adaptive capacity. But what's the possibility of a country like Bangladesh to recover from something like that?"

Climate insurance fund?

For poor countries in particular, Solomon argued that insurance mechanisms are going to become necessary. "There's a limit to the ability to build resilience in the face of climate change," she said. "At some point, migration is going to become an adaptation strategy, and at some point communities are just going to have to be compensated to rebuild their lives."

The idea of a "climate change insurance fund" -- over and above the $100 billion annually by 2020 that industrialized countries vowed to catalyze for vulnerable nations -- is deeply controversial. Under a proposal backed by small island nations, countries at risk of sea-level rise would pay an annual premium, but most money would come from wealthy nations.

Since scientists say that it is nearly impossible to link any single event to climate change, the fund would pay out according to damage and could even help entire nations pay for migration and relocation if their island is rendered inhabitable.

While the issue has earned a lot of attention, the policy idea ultimately got little traction at the last U.N. climate change conference in Cancun, Mexico.

Meanwhile, noted David Waskow, climate change program director at Oxfam America, adaptation saves lives. It is hard to imagine what the Japanese people might have suffered without the protections they did have, he said.

"We shouldn't forget that we're dealing with counter-factuals," Waskow said. "Were it not for the fact that they had done an enormous amount of preparedness ... the loss of life would be all the greater." In a similar vein, he pointed out, Bangladesh lost more than 100,000 people in a 1991 cyclone. By the time the next one struck in 2007, the country had created an early warning system, evacuation procedures for children and other measures. That cyclone's resulting 3,000 deaths was devastating -- but not nearly as catastrophic as its predecessor.

Building resilience pays, eventually

This week, 26 retired military leaders including Gen. Hugh Shelton, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a handful of businesses sent a letter to members of Congress urging them to protect federal funding for climate change resilience in developing countries. The GOP-led House has slashed most international climate funding in the continuing resolutions aimed at funding the government through 2011, and the military and business leaders asked to at least keep the dollars at 2010 levels.

"From the floods in Pakistan, to droughts and other disasters in Afghanistan, Somalia, Darfur, and Yemen, predictions of increasingly severe weather events will continue to play out. Fragile states further weakened by these events will create safe havens for those who seek to harm us and will inevitably result in stretching our military and humanitarian resources unless we proactively build climate change resilience in vulnerable nations," military officials wrote.

Meanwhile the businesses, including Levi Strauss & Co. and eBay Inc., noted that the World Bank and U.S. Geological Survey has found that efforts to reduce risks from disasters save $7 for every $1 spent. "Our country should invest in building resilience today in order to avoid even greater costs whenever developing countries are hit by climate-related events," they wrote.

Still, Waskow, noted, while lessons can be drawn "broadly" about disaster preparedness from Japan, it is important to remember that a tsunami is a particular type of disaster. Weather events of different kinds are distinct, as are the adaptation methods developed to address them. "Country context is very important," he said.