Thailand Rolls Out Climate Adaptation Plan Across All Sectors
Thailand launched a comprehensive climate adaptation plan covering six key sectors—water, agriculture, tourism, health, natural resources, and settlements—to translate global climate resilience targets into actionable measures across nation
The Department of Climate Change and Environment is advancing its sectoral adaptation action plan for Thailand's climate resilience in the era of extreme heat. The goal is to translate global adaptation targets into operations at every level.
On September 14, at the Best Western Hotel Chatuchak in Bangkok, Dr. Pirun Saiyasitthipanich, director of the Department of Climate Change and Environment, chaired a conference presenting the sectoral climate adaptation action plan for Thailand. The initiative aims to drive the National Adaptation Plan framework into concrete measures and activities implementable at the regional level, while elevating performance indicators to align with global target frameworks and linking operations from the national and sectoral levels down to the provincial and local levels.
Dr. Pirun revealed that the climate change crisis poses unavoidable risks affecting health, economy, society, and ecosystems. The World Meteorological Organization's State of the Global Climate 2025 report indicates that 2015–2024 were the 11 hottest years on record. The 2025 El Niño phenomenon is intensifying at a record-breaking pace, with relative heat indices 2.3 degrees Celsius above average and nearly a 100 percent likelihood of continuing through 2026. According to Germanwatch's Climate Risk Index 2026, Thailand ranks 17th globally for extreme weather impacts, reflecting growing and continuous risk across all sectors.
Dr. Pirun stated that Thailand must adapt global targets such as the UAE Framework for Global Climate Resilience and the Belém Adaptation Indicators from COP30 to suit the national context for planning, implementation, and progress monitoring. The effort covers six key sectors: water resource management, agriculture and food security, tourism, public health, natural resource management, and human settlement and security.
The 2025–2029 Sectoral Adaptation Action Plan serves as a key mechanism to translate the National Adaptation Plan framework into sectoral operations, converting climate adaptation guidelines into concrete practice. It sets measures, activities, and indicators across six sectors, enabling relevant agencies to integrate them with policies, strategies, plans, and budgets from national to local levels. It also promotes a monitoring, evaluation, reporting, and learning system, with the department acting as the central coordinating body focused on measuring real outcomes—risk and loss reduction, adaptive capacity building, and local transformation. The system incorporates biennial transparency reporting and UNFCCC frameworks to standardize and strengthen national adaptation progress while efficiently linking sectoral and local-level data to national monitoring.
