Substantial research on climate change is taking place in Asia, including the impacts climate change is likely to have on vulnerable populations and ways to adapt to new climatic conditions as they emerge. However, many of the insights gained are not communicated to key policymakers in a usable fashion. The Scientific and Technical Conference on Adapting to Climate Change in Asia was designed to address this communicative lacuna.

The goal of the Scientific and Technical Conference on Adapting to Climate Change in Asia was to present and discuss a broad array of results from recent and ongoing projects on climate change across Asia and to locate these results within large conceptual frameworks regarding adaptation processes and challenges. In addition, the conference was designed to serve as a key mechanism for disseminating results from a pilot research project on adaptation to climate change in South Asia supported by the IDRC and from recent ISET-International research with support from NOAA. The conference helped give clarity to this emerging field by summarizing new insights into the major political, economic, and social implications of adaptation to climate change and added to researchers' understanding of the complexities in global and regional climate change processes. Two fundamental messages emerged at the conference: (1) The critical role of autonomous adaptation and the systems that enable it, and (2) The impacts of climate change are already being observed in many regions across South Asia.

Keywords: Resilience and Climate Change Adaptation; Shared Learning Processes