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 km² 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.