Forging Local Ownership of Climate Impact Chains in Thailand

Thailand, a middle-income country (MIC) home to 67 million people, most of them (still) living in rural areas, is highly vulnerable to the anticipated impacts of climate change. The country is already among the most disaster-prone countries in the world. The Thai Government is thus devoting great effort to disaster risk management and climate change adaptation policies. The Office of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy and Planning (ONEP) is currently spearheading the development of a National Adaptation Plan (NAP) that will comprise adaptation goals, options, and priorities at the national level. It is further planning to carry out assessments at a subnational level for selected pilot hotspot regions. In its endeavours to respond to climate change, ONEP receives support from the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH in the framework of the project ‘Risk-based National Adaptation Plan’ (Risk-NAP).

In 2015, a national Vulnerability Assessment (VA) for Thailand was elaborated by experts of the Naresuan University. The assessment focuses on the six relevant sectors of the Thai National Climate Change Master Plan, i.e. agriculture and food security, natural resources, water, human settlement and security, tourism, and health. The aim of the assessment was to identify vulnerabilities within these specific sectors, on a national basis.

adelphi was commissioned by GIZ to develop sectoral impact chains in a participatory way. The main goal of developing impact chains is to provide a sound basis for the Office of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy and Planning (ONEP) and partners for identifying effective and appropriate adaptation priorities and measures at the national and subnational level. The impact chains will also be included in the ongoing NAP process for Thailand.

Two workshops and follow-up sessions with sectoral representatives from Thai ministries and universities were developed in Bangkok during the month of June in pursuit of these objectives. These activities helped foster ownership of the impact chains development process through the active participation of sectoral representatives and strengthened the sectoral assessment of climate change impacts. The impact chains follow the new IPCC AR5 conceptual framework, based on the risk concept, and are based on the Vulnerability Sourcebook created by adelphi, EURAC, and Z_GIS, the first comprehensive guidebook to be developed for conducting standardised vulnerability analyses.