The Southeast Asia (SEA) region is widely diverse politically, economically, and culturally, yet faces common challenges of impacts of climatic change and variability, poverty and inequity, and increasing vulnerabilities arising from rapid urbanization, degradation of resources and unsustainable development. Largely tropical and monsoonal, the region consists of countries that are low lying and archipelagic (Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia) and others that comprise a contiguous landmass sharing common borders and rivers.

This study embraces an understanding of adaptation that builds on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) definition of actions people take in response to, or in anticipation of, projected or actual changes in climate to adjust to and cope with impacts, moderate damages, and take advantage of opportunities.

The paper finds that comprehensive national plans on adaptation to climate change impacts are still in planning stages in all countries of Southeast Asia and national governments have been implementing and accumulating substantial experiences on programmes addressing poverty, disasters, weather monitoring and forecasting, and environmental issues. There are also focused national measures that address climate risk management and impacts on specific sectors

In some SEA countries, the level of knowledge and awareness on climate change impacts, mitigation and adaptation measures are low among local officials and insufficient to prompt them to formulate proactive and anticipatory action agendas. Also, little has been done to examine factors that make people vulnerable to climate change impacts in the first place, and which in turn constrain rather than enable their adaptive capacities to climate change impacts

In view of the guiding framework and to redress the gaps and the limitations of existing research approaches, the paper concludes by identifying the following themes as points of entry for research on people’s adaptation to climate change:

Migration;
Social security mechanisms;
Livelihood security of small-scale and subsistence fishers and upland farmers;
Strengthening resilience to health related impacts; and
Governance of adaptation across scales.