Pak Phanang District in southern Thailand’s Nakhon Si Thammarat Province is running out of time. Wedged between the Pak Phanang River delta and the Gulf of Thailand, with most of its coastal lowland sitting between one and three metres above mean sea level, the district is simultaneously squeezed by accelerating sea-level rise, monsoon intensification, and decades of mangrove loss. This study presents a holistic, community-centred resilience framework built through three years of transdisciplinary research — integrating biophysical hazard modelling, social vulnerability mapping, institutional assessment, and participatory scenario planning. Using IPCC AR6 SSP2-4.5 and SSP5-8.5 sea-level rise projections, tide-gauge records from 2000–2023, and a 2 m LiDAR digital elevation model, we mapped flood inundation across 312 km² of coastal lowland for current (2025), mid-century (2050), and end-of-century (2100) conditions. A Coastal Social Vulnerability Index (CSVI) built from 14 indicators and 480 household surveys across all 18 sub-districts revealed that the communities facing the most severe flood exposure are also the most socially vulnerable — the two problems compound one another. Under SSP5-8.5 by 2100, the 100-year flood zone expands from 187 km² to 297 km² and threatens 130,100 people. Local land subsidence of 4.2 mm/yr makes effective relative sea-level rise about 30% faster than global projections alone would suggest. Three staged resilience pathways — prioritising mangrove restoration first, engineered defences second, and governance reform running throughout — were co-designed with 264 community participants using the Dynamic Adaptive Policy Pathways (DAPP) method. The key finding cuts across all pathways: the greatest obstacle to adaptation in Pak Phanang is not a shortage of technical solutions but a shortage of governance capacity to act on them.
CHIMA KENNETH UGONABO (Sun,) studied this question.