This thesis focuses on an appropriate national climate change adaptation policy for Sri Lanka. An extensive multidisciplinary literature review guides the thesis in defining ‘appropriate’ climate change adaptation, and in determining a developmental paradigm on which an adaptation policy could be based. The thesis also sets out a policy process framework for developing an appropriate adaptation policy. The thesis draws on a wide array of literature and on policy actor understandings of adaptation policy content and processes, in order to build a theoretical basis for an appropriate climate change adaptation policy. A series of semi-structured in-depth interviews, carried out in Sri Lanka, were used as the primary source of empirical data. Together with these, review of a broad range of policy documents, budgetary information and status reports, helped provide rigour to the analysis. Use of theoretical literature and of multiple information sources allowed the research to generate credible, rich, and transferable findings.