U.S. President Barack Obama is expected to sign an executive order requiring federal agencies to take climate change into consideration when investing in development programs overseas.
The White House said in a statement the programs and investments will be designed to help communities deal with the effects of climate change.
The measures will be officially announced during the climate change summit at the U.N. General Assembly.
More than 120 world leaders are expected to meet and discuss ways to reduce their carbon emissions, part of a goal set in 2009 to prevent Earth’s temperature from rising more than 1.1 degrees Celsius from where it is now.
But leaders from China and India, some of the top emitters of greenhouse gases, will not be in attendance.
The U.N. summit aims to build political momentum for the Paris conference in late 2015 which will yield a final global climate change agreement.
On Monday, the World Bank announced that 73 national and 22 regional governments, together with about 1,000 companies, will join forces to push for policies that encourage a shift to cleaner energy technologies.
That coalition includes countries like China, South Africa, Russia and the Marshall Islands, and companies like British Airways, Unilever and Swiss cement manufacturer Holcim. One notable absentee from the list is the world’s largest economic power and the World Bank’s largest single funder, the United States.
