Chapter 16 Climate change adaptation in ASEAN: Actions and challenges

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) comprises 10 countries namely Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam ( Fig. 1 ). The ASEAN region has a total land area of 4.5 million square kilometers (3.3% of the world total) and a coastline of 173,252 km (third longest in the world). It is a region that boasts of a wealth of biodiversity including 20 percent of all known plant, animal, and marine species and one-third or 284,000 km 2 of all coral reefs. Four biodiversity hotspots identified by Conservation International cut across a wide area of the region that includes Indo-Burma, the Philippines, Sundaland, and Wallacea.