Asia faces some of the world's most significant climate-related risks — yet financing for adaptation and resilience (CA&R) is falling behind. By 2030, the region is expected to account for around 75% of the global CA&R financing gap.
Climate Adaptation and Resilience in Asia: Pricing Risk, Sizing Opportunities, Financing Solutions, a new report by the Centre for Impact Investing and Practices (CIIP), a Temasek Trust initiative, identifies more than 250 priority climate CA&R solutions for Asia and provides clear entry points for commercial, public, and philanthropic capital to accelerate action in the space.
Developed in partnership with Temasek, Invesco, and ImpactSF, and supported by Dalberg, the report draws on analysis of over US$100 billion in CA&R financing flows between 2021 and 2025, alongside insights from over 250 stakeholders, including a survey of 165 funders managing more than US$1 trillion in assets.
Asia's Growing Climate Challenge
Asia is warming at twice the global average. Since 2000, climate-related disasters have affected 3.7 billion people, more than three times the number in the rest of the world. By 2030, Asian companies are projected to bear around US$336 billion in annual climate costs.
At the same time, Asia has a significant financing gap. More than US$200 billion is needed annually across the region, yet current financing flows stand at only US$19 billion per year.
Across sectors, agriculture is one of the industries most significantly affected by climate change. Average annual production growth of key staple foods like rice has remained below 1.3% over the past decade and climate stress could reduce crop yields by as much as 41%, placing much of the burden on the region’s 100 million smallholder farmers – many of whom live on less than US$2 a day.
Coordinating Action and Capital Across the Spectrum
Today, over 90% of tracked CA&R financing in Asia comes from public sources, including governments and development finance institutions, while private capital remains largely concentrated in solutions that are commercially viable with lower risk profiles.
But not all CA&R solutions can be advanced by a single type of capital alone.
The report identified solutions across three tiers of commercial viability: from foundational with low or no commercial viability, to promising emerging opportunities that require catalytic capital to scale and proven commercial technologies. Advancing them requires better coordination across the capital spectrum and understanding of the roles that different types of funders can play.
Growing Investor Interest in Climate Adaptation
Promisingly, CA&R ranked as the leading impact theme amongst the 165 Asian funders surveyed. 49% of them are already actively investing, while 28% are exploring entry into the space.
Translating this interest into capital deployment, however, requires addressing key constraints such as pipeline challenges and gaps in knowledge and capacity.
Several structural issues also compound these factors, including underdeveloped policy and regulatory environments, limited access to data on local climate, risk, and costs, and mismatches between solutions and the funding available.
Many solutions are also highly context-specific, making them harder to scale and requiring longer investment horizons — further illustrating the need for coordinated action across the capital spectrum.
Building the Foundations for Long-Term Resilience
Recognising these needs, the report sets out a roadmap for scaling CA&R finance in Asia through seven key actions:
- Catalysing action
- Embedding climate adaptation as both a value and growth driver
- Strategic capital mobilisation across the spectrum
- Improving decision-making
- Better climate-risk pricing and valuation of resilience
- Impact-linked decision pathways
- Shared data and knowledge infrastructure
- Laying the foundations
- Climate-aligned financial system
- Cross-sector collaboration and delivery for scale
Together, these building blocks provide a roadmap for moving from fragmented responses towards coordinated ecosystem action that strengthens CA&R across communities, businesses, and economies.
For more insights, view the full report and the accompanying materials:
- A case study library featuring 50 real-world examples of companies, financial institutions and philanthropies advancing CA&R across Asia
- A deep dive on agri-food resilience in Southeast Asia
- An interactive fund flow dashboard mapping over US$100 billion in CA&R financing across China, India, and Southeast Asia
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