Climate change has been crucial global issue for decades. Based on the available scientific literature since the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), there are substantially more impacts in recent decades now attributed to climate change. According to the Global Climate Risk Index, four of the world’s ten countries most affected by climate change are located in Southeast Asia including Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. The geographical location of the ASEAN region makes it vulnerable to climate change.

        Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play a significant role in the Thai and ASEAN economy. The Office of SMEs Promotion (OSMEP) reported the numbers of Thai SMEs in 2016 of 3,004,679 accounted for 99.7% of total size enterprises in Thailand. In the same year, SMEs accounted for 39.4% of gross domestic product (GDP) and 79.5% of the workforce. Thai SMEs also contributed to 29.0% of total exports and 35.5% of total imports by value in 2016. The SMEs can be seen as the drivers of the economic growth. The contribution of SMEs to total GDP for AMS ranges between 23 and 59%; 32.7% for Malaysia, 59% for Indonesia in 2012 and 39.4% for Thailand in 2016. ASEAN SME Service center reported 51-97% of employment generated by SMEs in many AMS.

        Natural disaster and extreme events affect business in many ways. In 2011, the worst floods in more than 50 years hit Thailand’s central and northeast regions resulting in disrupting of business and society in a wide area. The floods posed impacts on the private sector, in particular the manufacturing industry. The impact of climate change on private sectors depends largely on their adaptive capacity. BSR™ (Business for Social Responsibility™) reported that climate change impacts on the private sector become more pronounced, particularly the risks inaction poses to business continuity and long-term sustainability. SMEs are more sensitive to business disruption in any circumstances due to shortage of resources and access to financial supports. Emerging of COVID-19, for example, is expected to pose 50% of SMEs worldwide at risk for bankruptcy in the short period. The challenges for SMEs for climate change mitigation and adaptation are the lack of knowledge on climate change effect, restricted accessibility to appropriate technology, lacking of information of longer-term benefits of climate resilience to their business.

        For this reason, Thailand Institute of Scientific and Technological Research or TISTR (under Thailand’s Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation) developed its project on “Strengthening SMEs in mitigating and adapting to climate change: Thailand case for ASEAN’s SMEs”, in order to foster SMEs especially in gathering information on available technologies, building up awareness on climate change effects, creating guidelines for mitigation and adaptation to particular climate change impacts, and supporting information and knowledge on business continuity management.