The impact of climate change and El Niño is increasingly causing coral reefs to bleach. WWF’s Friends of the Reef project is an effort to protect Asia Pacific’s coral reef ecosystems, which are the source of new coral recruits for reefs throughout the region and a source of livelihood for coastal people, especially in the fishery and tourism sectors. Friends of the Reef engages local stakeholders and decision makers in developing, testing, and implementing plans to increase coral reef resilience to major threats in the region, including climate change.

Mangrove forests are located in 23 coastal provinces in Thailand.  These forests used to cover 368,000 ha in Thailand in 1961, but the area dropped to 240,000 ha by 2002.  The major causes of the loss of mangrove forests are timber and charcoal industries, while some areas were converted for urbanization, agriculture, and aquaculture especially shrimp farms.  In 2004, a five-year Action Plan for Mangrove Management in the Gulf of Thailand was established to preserve mangrove forests, as well as to promote the sustainable use of mangrove resources.

In a case of autonomous adaptation, communities in the Lower Songkram River Basin have developed a number of coping mechanisms to deal with floods and droughts. One is indigenous forecasting methods (for example, ants removing their eggs from the nest is seen as a sign of rain, and a decrease in mushrooms can signal drought). Another is modification in fishing gear to conform to climate changes (for example, when the water level is high, they use traps or fishing hooks. When it is low, they use mong and uan tap taling, a type of net that is anchored along the riverbank).