Over six development agencies are screening their portfolios with the aim of ascertaining the extent to which exisiting development projects already consider climate risks or address vulnerability to climate variability; and identifying opportunities for incorporating climate change explicitly into future projects.This paper assesses this screening process in order to dentify opportunites for development agencies to expand their current focus on integrating adaptation to climate change with development planning and sectoral decision-making. Guidance is provided for how portfolio screening can be carried out in a way that would allow agencies to asses systematically the relevance of climate change to their ongoing and planned development projects.The paper recommends that, in order to mainstream adaptation into development assistance, the following factors should be considered:portfolio screening must be seen as a process rather than a productagencies should be able to utilise the vast experiences of peoples communities and development agencies with past climate vulnerability experiencemedium and long term needs need to be integrated with immediate priorities.