During 23rd-24th November 2015, the GIZ Connecting Climate Action (CCA) team and the Office of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy Planning (ONEP) organized the Stocktaking of National Adaptation Planning (SNAP) workshop. Building on the inputs and provisional roadmap developed during the NAP training that took place in October this year, the workshop aimed at assessing and arriving at a consensus on Thailand’s needs and capacities for climate change adaptation, while also informing the preparation and implementation of the country’s National Adaptation Plan (NAP).
On the first workshop day, participants coming from over 15 different government agencies were asked to fill in a questionnaire containing 21 questions on the level of access and availability of climate change adaptation information, data and implementation in Thailand. A preliminary analysis of the questionnaire’s results showed that while the long term vision and mandate for the NAP process are perceived to be quite strong, the access to climate information and the set-up of a monitoring and evaluation system for climate change adaptation are considered to be difficult or sensitive points within the NAP planning process.
The second day was devoted to the development of the NAP process roadmap. Divided in small break-out groups, participants identified which actions should be taken in the next five years to reach the NAP goal of ‘a climate resilient sustainable development’, while also defining which stakeholders should lead on implementation. Three priority actions emerged out of this roadmap exercise, partly reflecting the shortcomings that came out of the questionnaire, such as the issue of access and availability of climate data.
Overall, the workshop provided another opportunity for ONEP to disseminate information and knowledge on climate change adaptation as well as on the current state of the NAP process. It also laid the groundwork for defining goals and priority actions under the NAP in a multi-stakeholder approach. Next steps include the strengthening of inter-ministerial collaboration in the field of climate change as well as further efforts for aligning the NAP process with Thailand’s overall policies and development planning- two important conditions for successfully mainstreaming climate change adaptation.
Documents for download:
The SNAP tool has been developed by GIZ to accompany the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) NAP Technical Guidelines. Primarily developed to support the ‘stocktaking and assessment’ component of the NAP process, the tool uses as the basis for the assessment, seven success factors considered necessary for the successful development and implementation of a NAP process. These include climate information, human and institutional capacities, long term vision and mandate, implementation, mainstreaming, participation, monitoring and evaluation.