Beyond the risks: ASEAN cross-learning event on climate adaptation in Malolos City

How do ASEAN countries transition from planning to implementing national climate adaptation priorities? From 28 to 30 September, seven ASEAN countries and the Netherlands met in the Philippine city of Malolos. The meeting aimed to facilitate cross-learning and increase understanding of how to strengthen the enabling factors for the implementation of the National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) in these countries. 

The event was organised by the Philippines (ASEAN chair in 2026), and the Government of the Netherlands and facilitated by Partners for Water. It brought together policymakers involved in the NAP process from various national ministries and local governments as well as climate adaptation experts to share various frameworks, pathways and practical examples. Most ASEAN countries already have NAPs, but implementing them on the ground is hard. In Malolos, delegates and experts shared what worked, what didn’t work and where they still need support. Delegates came from Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Timor-Leste and Vietnam. Dutch experts from Rijkswaterstaat and the NL2120 knowledge network also participated.

Over three days, interactive sessions were held on land subsidence, systems understanding and root causes, Dynamic Adaptation Policy Pathways (DAPP), nature-based approaches, and climate adaptation financing. The insights gained from these sessions informed the further development of their regional adaptation cases selected for the event. A visit to Pamarawan island, where a nature-based coastal protection project is being implemented, was also organised.

Adaptation on the ground

One of the Philippine delegates at the cross-learning event, Sir Angel Boy Cruz, former mayor of Hagonoy, highlighted why cross-learning on climate adaptation matters: his community lives with floodwater on a day-to-day basis.

In the weekend before the cross-learning event, a small team of guest experts visited several sites in the wider Pampanga River Basin in Bulacan province to prepare for the cross-learning event and gather insights. Bulacan is highly vulnerable to flooding, storm surges and the impacts of climate change along Manila Bay. As part of the local implementation of national climate strategies, the province has integrated disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation into its Provincial Development and Physical Framework Plan (PDPFP).

Malolos City, for instance, is at the forefront of local climate action, with projects such as the Pamarawan nature-based coastal approach. This is the country’s first large-scale green coastal defence system, which uses natural materials to address tidal flooding and land subsidence.

During the preparatory field trip, Sir Angel showed the team parts of Hagonoy that had remained underwater for more than six weeks, as well as areas where the floodwaters had only recently receded. He demonstrated the effects of prolonged flooding on soil, nature, infrastructure and housing. In his own garden, the trees had stood in brackish water for almost six weeks. Even after the floodwaters had finally receded, the soil remained waterlogged, and the impact on the fruit trees and other vegetation was clearly visible. Some trees and plants had died. At the local village church, where flood marks from the preceding weeks were still clearly visible on the doors and walls, he showed a video of a couple getting married in the same church three weeks earlier. In the video, they walked down the aisle through floodwater that reached above their waists. For Sir Angel, this is the daily reality behind the question that brought the ASEAN delegates to Malolos: how can adaptation plans reach local communities like his?

Rice fields, fishponds, floodwater

Twenty years ago, the land around Sir Angel’s home was filled with rice fields. “Rice tolerates only a few centimetres of water, so farmers pumped their fields dry. By 2006, the rising water made that too expensive, and they stopped. Fish farming came next. With support from aquaculture offices, farmers tried white shrimp, milkfish and tilapia. Each time, floods arrived just before harvest. After four experiments, you no longer have the confidence,” he said. “Most villages now have little economic activity left.” His diagnosis: land subsidence is the root cause. “People think the water is rising, but in fact, the ground is sinking.” He estimates that only two or three out of ten people know this, with higher levels of government often hearing it for the first time. Satellite data from Malolos supporting his argument show that parts of the Philippine Pampanga Delta are sinking at up to 20 centimetres a year. “Small, isolated dikes do not solve the problem,” Sir Angel stated. “It is like a little wall on the river, but when the waters rise, it still spreads everywhere.” The area needs one comprehensive approach that respects nature, with local engineers, provincial authorities, hydrology experts and the local university at the table.

Listening first

The area between Hagonoy and Calumpit is also where Partners for Water is supporting a nature-based climate adaptation approach. Consultants from the Netherlands are working with Philippine partners and the communities on a climate adaptation plan for the area. The first phase consisted of interviews with residents, both online and on site. Based on the outcomes, a second phase will explore adaptation interventions like wetland restoration for water storage, including drinking water storage, combined with livelihood potential. “The plan will be built in co-creation with local stakeholders and the communities,” Sir Angel explained, “and not designed in an office somewhere else and imposed on the area.” Local knowledge matters: those who live with the water know what it means, and you only understand it by experiencing it yourself.

Sir Angel also welcomes Dutch expertise. “What the community knows is no longer enough, people need to be informed about other options.” He adds that the involvement of Dutch experts has helped connect the community with higher levels of government.

A video filmed during the preparatory field trip about the wider Pampanga River Basin that was shown at the opening of the cross-learning event followed the same logic. Nature-based approach expert Jasper Leuven explained that the first idea for this river basin was a large grey infrastructure to discharge water downstream. Local inhabitants as well as farmers saw many negative aspects of this solution and shared their ideas on how to solve it differently. The adapted plan includes this input and is composed of various reservoirs to store floodwater and protected zones to keep homes, schools and hospitals dry, and some farmland which is allowed to flood when needed.Both stories match what Sir Angel asked for earlier: not isolated fixes, but a comprehensive approach built with the people who live there. The Dutch contribution is not a ready-made solution, but a way of working. Listen to the community, combine local knowledge with additional expertise, and design from there.

Learning from each other

For Sir Angel, this is why cross-learning matters. Experts and officials in the Philippines cannot solve this alone. His region needs to learn from countries with the same climate challenges, “so it can look beyond the solutions it already knows.”

The cross-learning goes both ways. At the opening of the cross-learning event, the Dutch ambassador to the Philippines, Mr Roderick Wols, mentioned that ASEAN countries have valuable lessons for the Netherlands too. Few people in the Netherlands know what it is like to live with water in their house for weeks in a row.

What’s next?

In the coming year, nature-based climate adaptation approaches in the coastal area of Pamarawan Island, the Pampanga River Basin and the Hagonoy–Calumpit area will be further implemented, monitored and developed. Partners for Water, together with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the relevant government departments in the Philippines, will explore opportunities to create synergies between these pilot initiatives. The aim is to strengthen the region’s climate resilience and provide an inspiring example of practical, on-the-ground implementation for other ASEAN countries.