Building Institutional Capacity in Thailand to Design and Implement Climate Programs

1. Prioritisation of climate change adaptation
programmes and projects
Areeya Obidiegwu and Ray Purcell

2. 2nd Agricultural Climate Change
Strategy
• Currently 4 strategies, 11 strategies, 53
programmes (27of which for adaptation)
• Unknown number of projects under the 53
programmes
Why is there are need to prioritise?
• to help identify key strategic areas of activity
• and to help allocate scarce budgetary
resources

3. Current MOAC Approaches to
Prioritisation
For budget decision making, MOAC priorities
determined by a high level Budget Working
Group which sets key policy directions (this
year land consolidation and Learning Centres)
At Departmental level, Departments consider
the following criteria for selecting projects for
the budget

4. Current budget decision criteria
• The fit with Government and ministerial policies
• Policy directions from the Office of the
Permanent Secretary
• The perceived degree of urgency of a project
• Government redistribution policy relating to fair
distribution of projects across provinces
But the prioritisation processes are intuitive rather
than systematic (e.g. not based on scoring) and
therefore not always transparent

5. Current climate change prioritisation
practices
• Not a well developed methodological area
• Qualitative benefits approach has been piloted
but found to be skill and discussion intensive and
therefore time consuming
• Involves assessing projects against “with” and
“without” climate change and can be
conceptually quite difficult and unwieldly for
dealing with large numbers of projects
• Some simple MCA attempts but not well
documented

6. A First Cut Classification
UNDP Climate Relevance Index
High
relevance
Rationale Clear primary objective of delivering specific outcomes that improve climate resilience or
contribute to mitigation
Weighting
more than
75%*
Examples  Energy mitigation (e.g. renewables, energy efficiency)
 Disaster risk reduction and disaster management capacity
 The costs of changing the design of a programme to improve climate resilience
(e.g. extra costs of climate proofing infrastructure,
 Anything that responds to recent drought, cyclone or flooding, because it will
have added benefits for future extreme events
 Building institutional capacity to plan and manage climate change
 Raising awareness about climate change
 Anything meeting the criteria of climate change funds (e.g. GEF,PPCR)
Medium
relevance
Rationale Either (i) secondary objectives related to building climate resilience or contributing to
mitigation, or (ii) mixed programmes with a range of activities that are not easily
separated but include at least some that promote climate resilience or mitigation
Weighting
between
50% to
74%
Examples
 Water storage, water efficiency and irrigation that is motivated primarily by
improved livelihoods because this will also provide protection against drought
 Bio-diversity and conservation, unless explicitly aimed at increasing resilience
of ecosystems to climate change (or mitigation)
 Livelihood and social protection programmes, motivated by poverty reduction,
but building household reserves and assets and reducing vulnerability.
Low
relevance
Rationale Activities that display attributes where indirect adaptation and mitigation benefits may
arise
Weighting
between
25% - 49%
Examples
 Livelihoods, motivated by poverty reduction, but building household reserves
and assets and reducing vulnerability in areas of low climate vulnerability
 General planning capacity, either at national or local level, unless it is explicitly
linked to climate change, in which case it would be high
Marginal
relevance
Rationale Activities that have only very indirect and theoretical links to climate resilience
Weighting
less than
25%
Examples  Short term programmes (including humanitarian relief)
 The replacement element of any reconstruction investment (splitting off the
additional climate element as high relevance)

7. ADB Approach
Scoring methodology for assessing climate
change impact, vulnerabilities and technology
needs in six sectors:
• agriculture,
• coastal resources,
• human health,
• transportation,
• water resources, and
• disaster risk management (DRM).

8. ADB Scoring Criteria
• effectiveness
• relative costs
• co-benefits
• co-costs
• barriers to implementation
• feasibility of implementation
• scale of implementation
• applicable locations and conditions
• potential financing and markets

9. Criteria Suggestions for Scoring the CC Strategy
• climate relevance in terms of the Climate Relevance Index
• policy consistency against NESDP, National Climate Change Master
Plan, Govt Action Plans, ADP etc
• effectiveness, how well the programme reduces climate
vulnerability or increases resilience;
• socio-economic and poverty impact, the type of benefit, numbers,
location and typology of beneficiaries
• co-benefits, other development benefits the programme/project
may provide additional to climate change benefits, such as micro-
irrigation enhancing land condition
• co-costs, maladaptation - the number and magnitude of the
negative consequences, such as irrigation adversely affecting down
stream water supplies or damage to ecosystems
• feasibility of implementation, capacity to procure and execute
• finance availability relative to domestic or external funding
requirements

10. Scoring example
• See Handout on Scoring Framework Example