Status Of The Development Of Health National Adaptation Plan For Climate Change In South East Asia

The report on development of health national adaptation plan for climate change in South-East Asia report is prepared primarily based on the information presented at the WHO training on development of Health National Adaptation Plan for climate change held in Kathmandu, Nepal from 16-18 November 2016. The training was attended by focal points of climate change and health, Ministry of Health of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Indonesia, Maldives, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Timor-Leste. The report provides a summary of the process of developing a national health adaptation plan, its importance and status of HNAPs in these countries.

This book highlights the current issues, challenges, and priorities for climate change adaptation in the ten member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The status of each country was prepared by a consortium of researchers in consultation with National Focal Points of the ASEAN Working Group on Climate Change (AWGCC). National documents on adaptation actions, including local scenario and priorities, were reviewed where available and supplemented with an assessment of scientific publications to identify vulnerable ecosystems and regions. Adaptation needs and priorities were determined through stakeholder consultation in the respective countries. This allows for local-level perspectives to be captured and brought to the attention of policy and decision-makers at the national and regional levels. An important lesson from this exercise is that universities and research institutions at the national level have a critical role to play in bridging the gap between science and policy in climate change adaptation. These institutions also have the capacity to continuously facilitate transfer of the best available science for advancing climate change adaptation at the local level.

This volume provides an overview of the climate change adaptation objectives set, actions taken, and challenges faced by several countries in the Asia-Pacific region. The majority of the populations in this region struggle to make a living from subsistence agriculture, and livelihoods are highly dependent on natural ecosystem services which are likely to be severely affected by climate change. Cases discussed in this book highlight successes made by governments towards achieving adaptation objectives, and efforts required to overcome challenges. While significant economic advances have been made, the pace of growth has been slow to impact the lives of a majority of the people who live below the poverty line. The chapters highlight adaptation actions for protecting people and their livelihoods in priority sectors, maintaining food and water security, supporting socio-economic stability including poverty reduction, and climate risk management. This book also maximizes readers' insights into the knowledge gaps and limitations of stated adaptation goals, and the bottlenecks that hinder implementation in different regions.

This volume showcases the diversity of the politics and practices of climate change governance across Southeast Asia. Through a series of country-level case studies and regional perspectives, the authors in this volume explore the complexities and contested nature of climate governance in what can be considered as one of the most dynamic and multi-faceted regions of the world. They reflect upon the tensions between authoritarian and democratic climate change governance, the multiple roles of civil society and non-state interventions, and the conflicts between state planning and market-driven climate change governance. Shedding light on climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts in Southeast Asia, this book presents the various formal and informal institutions of climate change governance, their relevant actors, procedures, and policies. Empirical findings from a diverse set of environments are merged into a cross-country comparison that allows for elaborating on similar patterns whilst at the same time highlighting the distinct features of climate change governance in Southeast Asia. Drawing on case studies from all Southeast Asian countries, namely Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Timor-Leste, and Viet Nam, this book will be of great interest to students, scholars, and practitioners dealing with climate change and environmental governance.

This book is the first to present a regional analysis of climate change and human health, focusing on geographically and socio-economically distinct countries of South and Southeast Asia. It has a major focus on India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Thailand, Nepal and Taiwan. Climate change is a significant and emerging threat to human health. lt represents a range of environmental hazards and will affect populations in both the developed and developing countries. In particular, it affects the regions where the current burden of climate-sensitive diseases are high, which is the case in South and Southeast Asian countries.

This publication reviews the economics of climate change in Southeast Asia, with a particular focus on Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Viet Nam. It confirms that the region is highly vulnerable to climate change, demonstrates that a wide range of adaptation measures are already being applied, and that it has great potential to contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions globally. It shows that the cost to the region and globally of taking no early action against climate change far outweighs the cost of action. The publication urges Southeast Asia to play an important part in working toward a global solution to climate change, and to apply all feasible and economically viable adaptation and mitigation measures as key elements of poverty reduction and sustainable development strategies. It also argues that the current global economic crisis offers Southeast Asia an opportunity to start a transition towards a climate-resilient and low-carbon economy by introducing green stimulus programs that can simultaneously shore up economies, create jobs, reduce poverty, lower carbon emissions, and prepare for the worst effects of climate change.

This book makes an important and timely contribution to debates about the relationship between climate change and security in Southeast Asia. It does so through a human security lens, drawing on local and regional expertise to discuss the threats that climate change poses to human security in Southeast Asia and to show how a human security approach draws attention to the importance of adaptation and strategies for social resilience. In doing so, it exposes the consequences of climate change, the impact on community rights and access, the special problem of border areas, before going on to investigate local and regional strategies for addressing the human security challenges of climate change.

The South Asia region is both a large contributor to climate change and also one of the regions most vulnerable to climate change. This paper provides an overview of the region’s vulnerabilities, national committments to mitigate emissions, and national policies to adapt to a changing climate. The paper also discusses policy measures that may be needed to make further progress on both mitigation and adapatation. Our analysis suggests that while substantial progress is being made, there remains scope to adopt a more cohesive strategy to achieve the region’s goals—including by improving the monitoring and tracking of adaptation spending, and by laying the groundwork to equitably increase the effective price of carbon while protecting low-income and vulnerable households in the region.

Around the world climate change is already impacting on health, via more frequent and intense extreme weather events, as well as by altering the prevalence and distributions of vector- and water-borne diseases. The high and rapidly growing population in Southeast Asia is heavily reliant on agriculture for livelihoods, which makes it vulnerable to climate change impacts such as sea level rise and typhoons. In this context, regional organisations are playing an increasingly important role in climate change adaptation and health. For example, the Asian Development Bank and the Asia-Pacific Regional Forum on Health and Environment are both involved in adaptation and health initiatives. Despite this, however, there is a lack of empirical research on the value added by regional organisations to adaptation and health actions and initiatives. Prepared as a thesis by compilation, this research helps fill this gap by examining the effectiveness of regional organisations supporting national level adaptation and health in Southeast Asia. A three-step process was used for this examination. Firstly, three national case studies were conducted in Southeast Asia, focussing on adaptation and health. These individual pieces of research used an open-ended research methodology to limit researcher bias, with the goal of identifying similarities and differences in governance-related adaptation and health challenges across the case-study countries. Secondly, a systematic framework was developed for assessing regional organisations supporting climate change adaptation. So as to be applicable across sectors and geographies, the framework was developed outside of Southeast Asia and outside the health sector. Thirdly, the resultant framework was used to guide the research examining regional organisations supporting adaptation and health initiatives in Southeast Asia, to both determine their strengths and weaknesses, and to identify pathways to improve their effectiveness. The main findings of this research were that, first, coordination challenges exist between organisations, sectors and scales, as well as across sub-national boundaries. In all cases, poor coordination is limiting and constraining adaptation and health. Further, coordination challenges are limiting adaptation and health in all three case study countries, despite different levels of development and different governance arrangements. Second, regional organisations are not necessarily well-placed for direct project implementation, but maymore effectively support adaptation through creating enabling environments at the national level. This may be done through supporting national level capacity building, and acting as specialised knowledge banks, such as for climate-modelling data. Third, where there is a lack of coordination, mandate overlaps for regional organisations working in the same region have negative impacts on climate change adaptation, including adaptation and health. A final finding is that institutionalised and incentivised coordination between such regional organisations would benefit adaptation and health initiatives in two key ways. Firstly, both the administrative workload on developing country government agencies and redundancies in the work of regional organisations would be reduced. Secondly, better inter-organisation coordination would provide regional organisations with a stronger foundation for supporting countries to coordinate across scales, sectors and boundaries. The findings outlined in the paragraph above are the basis for the five primary contributions to the academic literature that this thesis makes. Firstly, coordination is a major adaptation and health constraint, regardless of governance arrangements, ideologies or scales. Secondly, a framework for assessing regional organisations coordinating climate change adaptation was developed. Thirdly, the utility of the developed framework was demonstrated across three regions, as well as across sectors. Fourth, integrating the strengths of project and governance approaches provides an avenue for improving adaptation and health results. The final theoretical contribution of this thesis is that integrating the strengths of these two approaches, by coordinating collaboratively, will enable better regional organisation support for coordination within countries. This body of work will provide insights for national governments as well as regional and international organisations on how they can improve their interactions to better support adaptation and health outcomes.

Climate change is a global phenomenon that is being experienced by all levels of society, regardless of race and species, and in all types of ecosystems, regardless of geographic location. It will have diverse effects on biodiversity which will directly impact on food security, water supply, and livelihood among others, especially for the poor and more vulnerable sectors of human society. More importantly, all forms of life including human society are trying their best to adapt and survive. This book explores the two-way link between climate change and the state of biodiversity in Southeast Asia. By drawing on the experiences and lessons shared by representatives from research and development agencies, academic institutions, donors, and other organizations; and the crosscutting issues contributed by experts, this book aims to provide insights, lessons, and perspectives on how Southeast Asia is dealing with these twin concerns. This book is invaluable to all who are interested in assessing research gaps, identifying future research areas, drafting effective policy agenda, and implementing critical activities at the community, national, and international levels.