The USAID Mekong Adaptation and Resilience to Climate Change project has piloted an integrative method for developing climate change adaptation plans within Lower Mekong Basin communities. Through an iterative process, traditionally distinct top-down and bottom-up approaches to decision-making are merged to improve resilience and sustainability of adaptation plans. The approach helps to broaden the understanding of both scientists and community members on the implications of climate change at the local level. Methods are highlighted within one pilot community, Huai Kang Pla, Thailand, with the primary goal of exemplifying the process, and, secondarily, to evaluate its validity in the context particular to this site. The results indicate that community members initially were most concerned with shorter term, atypical events such as irregular rainfall pattern during the growing season and/or periods of extreme temperature that intensify the annual drought. They were less troubled by other parameters that scientists had identified as additionally important, such as the more progressive, longer term shifts in average temperature and rainfall totals. Scientists defined key climate-related terms such as drought and irregular rainfall differently from community members; the distinctions around these differences were important to identify early in the process so that integration of information from the two groups could be more effective.
Gustafson, S; Cadena, AJ; Hartman, P
Adaptation planning in the Lower Mekong Basin: merging scientific data with local perspective to improve community resilience to climate change
Climate And Development