Sink or Swim: Southeast Asia’s Green Transition
Southeast Asia is home to some of the world’s most climate-vulnerable areas. Faced with the growing threat of climate change, the region has seen a significant shift towards the development and implementation of green technology and sustainable development initiatives in recent years.
This panel examined how public and private sectors in SEA leverage climate technology and policy to tackle the most urgent climate change challenges, and delved into adjacent topics such as the need to ensure efforts to address such challenges are equitable.
Many sources of innovation focus on digital and consumer-facing solutions, but not many come from the region - most come from Europe and the US.
Mr Teo
People in the Philippines understand the urgency of climate change the most; others in Myanmar tend to view climate change as less of a risk… Most in ASEAN believe that governments should be responsible for covering [costs], while [less] felt they were [individually] responsible...
Ms Martinus
We’re in crisis mode and have to think about market-ready and deployable solutions that are available to us right now. We don’t have as much time to spend on developing novel solutions.
Prof Delina
We need to be pragmatic when thinking about the situation before us and think more critically about the trade-offs that we can and should make.
Ms Puiyan
Panelists
Mr Frederick Teo
CEO of GenZero whose work focuses on climate impact; led the establishment of Climate Impact X, a global marketplace for the exchange of carbon credits, and Singapore’s first brownfield distributed district cooling retrofit project in partnership with SP Group.
Ms Melinda Martinus
Lead Researcher at ISEAS - Yusok Ishak Institute and the co-editor of the State of Southeast Asia and the Southeast Asia Climate Outlook, two of ISEAS’ annual survey reports
Prof. Laurence Delina
Assistant Professor at the Division of Environment and Sustainability at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, with a focus on developing solutions for mitigating climate change and accelerating the clean energy transitions
Ms Leung Puiyan
Partner at Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India whose work centers on investment in high-growth start-ups
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