Climate Change Adaptation

ASEAN and ASEAN Member States are better able to cooperate and intertwine their respective climate policies with one another in the region while increasing visibility in international dialogue.

Even though all Member States of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have signed the Paris Agreement and formulated their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), some of the countries depend on various support to implement the plan in line with attaining the Sustainable Development Goals as well as international climate targets amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. This situation is an opportunity for the ASEAN to demonstrate its leadership in the region by serving as a dialogue and cooperation platform, contributing political momentum and thus playing a key role of an intermediary between international and national climate policy processes.

The ASEAN deliberately improves its cooperation to implement ambitious climate policies by improving individual efforts of its member countries and enhancing regional coordination and implementation of strategies through regular regional dialogues and building up competencies and tools.

The project cooperates closely with the ASEAN Secretariat, the ASEAN Working Group on Climate Change (AWGCC) and other relevant ASEAN bodies. It focuses on strengthening ASEAN structures and processes to make climate policy more effective and contributes to anchoring climate policy issues more systematically in ASEAN policy documents, in particular with regard to the NDC’s implementation in the priority sector of land use, land use change and forestry. The project also provides targeted support in three areas:

• Improving the capacities of the ASEAN bodies with regard to climate policy
• Increasing visibility in the international dialogue on climate policy
• Supporting the ASEAN member states to better intertwine their respective climate policies with one another

At national level, the project implements two pilot measures, each one in Indonesia and Viet Nam. The intention is to involve the private sector in these measures, to integrate climate financing tools and to discuss climate and sustainable finance aspects.