They made some progress at the annual December round of the international negotiations on controlling climate change, held this year in Qatar. They agreed that the countries that cause the warming should compensate the ones that suffer the most from it. The principle, known as the Loss and Damage mechanism, has no numbers attached to it, but it's a step forward. The only step forward, unfortunately.
In the first phase of these talks, which concluded with the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, the emphasis was on "mitigation"; that is, on stopping the warming by cutting human emissions of carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse gases." That made good sense, but they didn't get anywhere. Fifteen years later, emissions are still rising, not falling.
So gradually the emphasis shifted to "adaptation." If we can't agree on measures to stop the average global temperature from going up, can we learn to live with it? What's the plan for developing new crops to withstand the droughts and high temperatures that are coming? What's the plan for coping with massive floods that drown river valleys and inundate coastlines?