Finance and planning ministries decide budgets on GDP, jobs and avoided costs. Physical climate projections describe hazards; adaptation wins budget share when its case is made in economic terms. Water matters most here: floods, droughts and falling water availability are the main routes by which climate risk reaches farms, power plants, factories and households. The GIZ programme Policy Advice for Climate Resilient Economic Development (CRED) built national economic models for Kazakhstan, Georgia, Mongolia, Nigeria and Vietnam. Each model treats water as an input to every sector, so the knock-on effects of a drought show up in one run. Each adaptation measure is tested for avoided losses, GDP, jobs and emissions under low, medium and high emission pathways. A measure counts as robust when it pays off under all three. Five models were built and handed to national institutions.