Beyond weathering the storm: What drives climate adaptation in coastal communities?
Monash Business School PhD candidate Lam Pham.
7 September 2026
As a child growing up in Vietnam, Lam Pham became accustomed to realities many people only see on the news: storm evacuations, disaster relief convoys and floodwaters she had to wade through to get to school.
Those experiences led her to question why some communities recover and adapt after disasters while others face the same challenges year after year.
Today, the PhD candidate is searching for answers through research that explores the social, behavioural and institutional factors influencing how communities respond to climate change and extreme weather events.
“What interests me most is that climate change adaptation is not just about the environment or the weather,” she said.
“It is also about people, institutions, livelihoods, and social change - about how communities work together to overcome challenges, learn from past experiences, and create more resilient futures.”
Understanding what drives adaptation
To discover what separates communities that adapt successfully from those that remain vulnerable, Ms Pham has developed a behavioural adaptation framework to analyse processes across different social and ecological scales.
Using qualitative and quantitative data collected from coastal communities in Vietnam, she examines how community capability and motivation, collective action, social networks, institutions, and governance structures interact to shape the decisions communities make about their futures.
Her focus is on what she calls the move from incremental to transformative adaptation - the difference between patching over immediate risks and addressing the structural conditions that make communities vulnerable in the first place.
As the impacts of climate change intensify, she believes this distinction matters more than ever.
“Understanding these processes can not only help us respond more effectively to climate risks but also contribute to building stronger, more equitable, and more sustainable communities for the future,” she said.
Her supervisor, Associate Professor Stefan Kaufman, said the research addresses one of the most pressing global challenges of the coming decades.
“Lam brings together strong analytical skills, lived experience, and a commitment to producing research that can inform practice,” Associate Professor Kaufmann said.
“Her work contributes to how humanity learns to do what no other species has yet managed - to intentionally co-evolve our relations with the contexts we create.”
Ms Pham plans to continue refining and testing the framework in different settings to better understand what enables communities to adapt successfully.
“I hope the findings can help inform climate change adaptation policies and community development programs, particularly in vulnerable coastal regions,” she said.
Inspired by collaboration
Ms Pham said the diversity of expertise and cross-disciplinary exchange at the business school had pushed her thinking in directions she hadn’t anticipated, reinforcing her belief that tackling climate change demands collective intellectual effort.
She said that spirit of collaboration mirrors the coastal communities at the heart of her research.
“Despite facing significant challenges and uncertainty, they continue to find creative ways to adapt and support one another,” she said.
“Their stories remind me why research matters and motivate me to pursue work that can create positive impacts in practice.”
Read about other Monash Business School PhD students making real-world impact.