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View all search resultsASEAN: From regional cooperation to global climate action
Facing acute climate risks, ASEAN is taking its united front to COP31, turning regional solidarity into global action for a resilient and sustainable future.
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Triple exposure: Turkish Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change Minister Murat Kurum is projected onto three screens as he delivers a speech in his capacity as president of the 31st United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP31) on Nov. 9, 2026, during the annual gathering’s opening session at the Antalya Expo Center in Antalya, southern Turkey. (AFP/Ozan Kose)
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limate change is one of the most urgent challenges facing the world today. Rising temperatures, intensifying extreme weather conditions and mounting pressures on ecosystems and livelihoods are reshaping our development prospects and testing our collective resilience. Climate change knows no borders, and no country can confront its consequences alone.
In an age of growing climate risk and uncertainty, regional solidarity, international cooperation and decisive collective action are indispensable. For ASEAN, the task goes beyond reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It is to build a more resilient, sustainable and inclusive future for our region and the planet.
When ASEAN leaders adopted the ASEAN Community Vision 2045, “Our Shared Future”, on May 26, 2025 they charted an ambitious course toward a resilient, innovative, dynamic and people-centered region. That vision echoes the theme of the Philippines’ 2026 ASEAN chairmanship, “Navigating Our Future, Together”, which reflects our shared determination to meet emerging challenges through unity and cooperation. Climate action is central to realizing this vision, as we turn our collective aspirations into concrete, sustainable outcomes.
Home to nearly 700 million people, with a combined gross domestic product of about US$4.3 trillion in 2025, ASEAN has emerged as a major regional and global economic actor. It is also a custodian of natural assets of global importance.
The region occupies more than 3 percent of the world’s total land area, yet it holds more than 25 percent of the world’s known plant and animal species and approximately 27 million hectares of peatlands, nearly 40 percent of the world’s known tropical peatlands.
Through the ASEAN Biodiversity Plan 2024–2030 and the ASEAN Peatland Management Strategy 2023–2030, ASEAN member states are working together to conserve and sustainably manage these carbon-rich ecosystems. This is a contribution to global climate efforts that the region is well placed to make. At the same time, ASEAN is among the world’s most climate-vulnerable regions, already experiencing more frequent and severe floods and droughts, as well as rising sea levels. Addressing these challenges requires not only national action, but also stronger regional cooperation.
ASEAN has long demonstrated its commitment to regional solidarity, through successive ASEAN Joint Statements on Climate Change to the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and through the first ASEAN pavilion at COP30 in Belém, Brazil, last year. The region will host its second ASEAN pavilion at COP31 in Antalya, Turkey, from Nov. 9-20. Led by the ASEAN member states, the pavilion offers an opportunity to bring the region’s commitment and experience to the global stage, show how ASEAN’s efforts align with international climate action and deepen engagement with the global climate community, guided by the COP31 presidency’s vision of “Dialogue. Consensus. Action”.
