In The News

There are wide gaps between estimated needs and available capacity and finance, when it comes to climate adaptation and resilience. Put simply, adaptation is about taking measures to avoid or moderate damage from climate and weather-driven events, while resilience is about coping with and recovering from them. 

An assessment published in May by Temasek Trust's Centre for Impact Investing and Practices (CIIP) concluded that by 2030, Asia will account for around 75 per cent of the global climate adaptation and resilience financing gap. “More than US$200 billion is required annually across the region, yet current flows stand at only around US$19 billion,” it said.

A paper by McKinsey, also in May, zeroed in on Southeast Asia. It concluded that to protect the region today to the adaptation standards of developed economies, it would need additional investment of about US$25 billion per year, bringing total annual investment to US$37 billion.

This gap has consequences that are being lived with now, in the thousands displaced by the Nepal disaster, the human health costs of bad air quality in lower Southeast Asia, and the looming agriculture crisis.

While poorer people bear the brunt, the wealthy are not exempt; Asian companies are projected to bear around US$336 billion in annual climate costs, the CIIP study concluded.