By Shaira Panela
BANGKOK, Thailand — Following the theme for this year’s Regional Forum on Climate Change on bridging science, practice and policy, a number of discussions focused on adopting community-level adaptations and mitigation measures.
Professor Taikan Oki of University of Tokyo in Japan, during his keynote speech, showed that there are specific regional climate risks and potentials in the world. For example, Asia is more concerned about flood, drought, and heatwave which could be addressed through appropriate technologies while small island states are concerned about livelihood and coasts to which proper building codes should be implemented.
Many of the discussions provided case studies about the status of carbon emissions as well as climate adaptation and mitigation measures, particularly in cities and towns in the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, among others.
One of the discussions during the three-day event held at the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok, is about up-scaling commune level climate change adaptation in the Mekong Delta.
Citing several studies his team has conducted in the region, John Ward showed how some good practices from the commune level could be adapted into a a wider level.
Willingness to adapt is critical for adoption of new management practices, John Ward said.
He discussed the five-step process to up-scale adaptation intentions which includes: eliciting households’ willingness to adapt, identifying adaptation classes, identifying characteristics of sampled adaptive communes, identifying high adaptive communes, and adding the livelihood filter.
Ward said that livelihood filter can help guide investments in climate adaptation.
“Most livelihood issues are not economic but cultural,” he said.
Meanwhile, during the first day of the forum, Christine Cabasset of the Ministry of Education of East Timor talked about territorial governance, tourism and the stakes of climate change in Southeast Asia.
She cited that at least two cities in the region, Jakarta and Manila, are among the most vulnerable cities to climate change impact.
“Good governance at the local level are particularly challenging on internationalized cities,” Cabasset said.
However, she said that there are examples of good governance in the region, those that show clear vision and political will in leadership.
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