Mekong - U.S. Partnership
Provincial officials, city leaders, community members and representatives from a range of stakeholder groups met in Patong, Thailand, last week to learn about intervention projects being conducted in Phuket and to discuss how the outcomes and lessons learned in these projects can help the province better address key challenges related to development, urbanization and climate change.
The Phuket intervention projects are part of USAID’s Mekong-Building Climate Resilience in Asian Cities (USAID M-BRACE) program, which is a regional program that develops and applies practical methods for building resilience to the impacts of climate change among stakeholders in medium-sized cities in Thailand and Vietnam.
The three intervention projects included a range of activities such as construction of a new meteorological monitoring station in Patong, development of climate change and environment classes for schools, capacity-building in stakeholder engagement and a youth short film competition. These projects address key challenges and weaknesses identified in the USAID M-BRACE vulnerability assessment. At the meeting, participants discussed how they could modify and improve existing governance and management processes to incorporate the successful methodologies from these projects.
After four years of work in Phuket, USAID-funded M-BRACE, overseen by the Institute for Social and Environmental Transition in partnership with Thailand Environment Institute, has, in the words of one stakeholder, “helped Phuket identify and discuss issues in ways that address the underlying causes such as land-use change and urbanization.”
Source: USAID/RDMA Regional Environment Office Weekly Update
