Increasing resilience to climate change impacts in marine and coastal areas along the Gulf of Thailand
Project Overview
The project aims to integrate climate change adaptation into marine and coastal area related planning and budgeting in the Gulf of Thailand with a focus on agriculture, fisheries, and tourism. The project builds on Thailand’s National Adaptation Plan (NAP) process and focuses thematically on marine and coastal areas and sub-national level adaptation planning. The project’s objectives are to be achieved through three key outcomes: enhancing capacities for climate risk-informed marine and coastal area development planning; strengthening NAP implementation and mainstreaming adaptation in planning and budgeting in marine and coastal areas; and developing financing strategies for climate adaptation. This GCF NAP Readiness project is expected to provide an important contribution to the implementation of Thailand’s National Adaptation Plan (NAP), prepared by the Office of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy and Planning (ONEP), which provides an overarching planning framework for addressing climate change adaptation.
Project Details
The project “Increasing resilience to climate change impacts in marine and coastal areas along the Gulf of Thailand” is designed to contribute to the implementation of Thailand’s National Adaptation Plan (NAP). The main objective of the project is to integrate climate change adaptation into planning and budgeting for marine and coastal areas. The project aims to address barriers that hinder information, knowledge, and coordination for adaptation planning; technical capacities for integration of risk informed approaches in planning and budgeting; and lack of options to attract financing for climate change adaptation, particularly from the private sector.
Marine and coastal areas of the Gulf of Thailand are expected to experience significant impacts of climate change, with increase in extreme events, sea-level rise, climate induced erosion, drought, and flooding that affect local tourism, agriculture, fisheries, natural resources and create additional stress on land and water resource management. Vulnerability is heightened due to the dependence on a limited number of economic sectors, namely agriculture and tourism. Due to their low coping capacity, limited awareness of and high exposure to climate change risks and impacts, women, young children, the elderly, the disabled, and economically marginalized social groups are the most affected by unmitigated climate change impacts and fewer income and employment generation opportunities. Therefore, there is a clear need for capacity building in communities, decision-makers, and the private sector to raise awareness about climate change risks and facilitate adaptive development planning.
The project complements other initiatives supporting the NAP implementation in Thailand. Thailand’s NAP (draft prepared in 2018) identified six key sectors: (1) water management; (2) agriculture and food security; (3) tourism; (4) public health; (5) natural resource management; and (6) human settlement and security. This project will focus on addressing gaps of current support programmes. The project will work towards improving climate-responsive natural resource management through the integrative approach of enhancing adaptation planning and budgeting in key marine and coastal economic sectors, targeting agriculture, fisheries, and tourism. The project will focus on 18 coastal provinces along the Gulf of Thailand. The overall timeline of Thailand’s NAP implementation allows this project to utilize best-practices and information from other interventions, to expand the knowledge-base and regulatory framework, particularly for the sub-national level, and to revise and update Thailand’s NAP. The following sub-outcomes (outputs) are expected to be delivered by the project:
- developed knowledge base on climate change impacts, risk, vulnerabilities, and adaptation options in marine and coastal areas, and disseminated information;
- enhanced technical capacity for planning, budgeting, and implementation of adaptation;
- updated and developed NAP monitoring modalities;
- participatory review, prioritization, and appraisal of adaptation options for climate-induced hazards affecting marine and coastal areas undertaken;
- strengthened institutional coordination for the NAP process;
- improved climate-risk informed business development and planning at the provincial, sub-district, and local levels;
- identified viable options and mechanisms for scaling up adaptation finance, including through public-private partnerships, and drafted financing strategies and concept notes;
- facilitated integration of best practices into the NAP process.
Project updates
In addition to the organization of in-person and online inception workshops, the project has conducted climate change impact projections, risk, and vulnerability assessment in 4 selected provinces of 18 coastal provinces namely Rayong, Petchaburi, Surattani and Songkhla. Select criteria of each province have been considered including existing climate risk map assessment results and gross provincial product (GPP). The climate change impact projections focused on key climate threats such as flood, drought, sea level rise, and sea surface temperature. Climate risk and vulnerability assessments have been conducted on coastal and marine resources including three key economic sectors - agriculture, fisheries, and tourism. The results of the climate change impact projections, risk and vulnerability assessments are key information to disseminate to public through a climate adaptation platform and geographical information system (GIS) and provides the basis for capacity building and consultations with sub-national government officers and local and other stakeholders. Currently, the platform has been developed and integrating the results of the studies.
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Key Results and Outputs
Outcome 1: Enhanced capacity and knowledge to enable climate risk-informed marine and coastal area development planning at the sub-national level;
Outcome 2: Strengthened existing NAP implementation and mainstreamed adaptation in planning and budgeting in marine and coastal areas;
Outcome 3: Financing strategies for climate change adaptation in marine and coastal areas identified and developed.