In his speech, Mr. Desmond Kuek, Executive Director and CEO, Temasek Trust, highlighted the critical role of long-term, impact-oriented capital in tackling complex global challenges, such as global warming, severe weather events, disaster-related displacements, ageing societies, and food security. These trends carry climate and social risks that are often underpriced and therefore underfunded.

Mr. Desmond Kuek, Executive Director and CEO, Temasek Trust, delivering his remarks. View the full speech here.

Solving these issues will require systemic approaches, coordinated action, and new partnerships across governments, investors, corporates, and philanthropy. In particular, Mr. Kuek called for more financing that is willing to take early risk to prove solutions, unlock markets, and crowd in larger pools of investment. 

He said: “Good intent is not a strategy. If we are serious about outcomes, we must do three things: we must price climate and social risk honestly; we must build investable structures that blend catalytic and commercial capital; and we must measure what matters so successful models can be replicated and scaled.”

Temasek Trust is investing in early climate and health solutions through Catalytic Capital for Climate and Health and building pipelines of investable impact solutions through our digital impact marketplace Co-Axis as well as the Amplifier programme by CIIP and the Philanthropy Asia Alliance, which just launched a new water resilience track with the Asian Development Bank.

The increasing importance of climate adaptation and resilience as investment themes is reflected in CIIP’s latest report, which aims to provide greater clarity on the roles different stakeholders can play in advancing such solutions across Asia.

Mapping 250+ climate adaptation and resilience opportunities for Asia

In her opening speech, Ms. Dawn Chan, CEO, CIIP, announced the Climate Adaptation and Resilience in Asia: Pricing Risk, Sizing Opportunities, Financing Solutions report, authored by CIIP in partnership with Temasek, Invesco, CGIAR Hub for Sustainable Finance (ImpactSF), and supported by Dalberg.

Ms. Dawn Chan, CEO, CIIP, officially launching the report in her opening remarks.

The report surfaces more than 250 priority climate adaptation and resilience solutions across nine sectors for Asia, grounded in the region’s unique climate risks, hazards, and priorities. These are informed by analysis of over US$100 billion in climate adaptation and resilience financing flows between 2021 and 2025.

The solutions span three tiers of commercial viability, offering clear entry points for investors across the capital spectrum to support solutions of differing maturity. These range from early-stage innovation and ecosystem development to scaling proven technologies and infrastructure.

The research findings speak to growing funder interest in climate adaptation and resilience — the leading impact theme in a survey of 165 Asia funders collectively managing over US$1 trillion in AUM. The report is accompanied by an interactive fund flow intelligence dashboard that maps public, private, and philanthropic capital flows as well as impact opportunities across China, India, and Southeast Asia.

Ms. Chan said: “The opportunity landscape for climate adaptation and resilience is diverse. Greater coordination across the entire spectrum of capital is crucial, so that projects and companies receive the right blend of capital and support at every stage of their journey to accelerate their solutions and impact.”

Read the announcement to learn more.

The first segment of the event commenced with a panel on key opportunities in unlocking financing for climate adaptation and resilience. This was followed by roundtable discussions on challenges around deploying capital into such solutions.

(From right) Mr. Alexander Chan, CAO for Asia Pacific, Invesco, moderated the panel with Dr. Megumi Muto, Senior Managing Executive Officer and Deputy Chief Sustainability Officer of Mizuho; Ms. Diana Guzman, Group Chief Sustainability Officer, Prudential plc and Chairperson, Prudence Foundation; Mr. Hari Menon, President, Global Growth & Opportunity, Gates Foundation; Mr. Lorenzo O. Chan, Chief Executive Officer of Pioneer Insurance; and Ms. Mireille Einwachter, Chief Sustainability Officer, FrieslandCampina.

A recurring theme was that climate adaptation and resilience cannot be tackled effectively through individual efforts or institutions. Participants repeatedly emphasised a highly fragmented ecosystem where large institutional investors control significant pools of capital, and many adaptation opportunities remain small, local, and difficult to scale.

Participants sharing their perspectives during the roundtable discussions following the panel titled “The Business of Building Resilience: Unlocking Climate Adaptation Opportunities in Asia”.

Key takeaways from the segment include:

1. Climate adaptation and resilience solutions are inherently local

Adaptation solutions must be locally designed and implemented as investment opportunities and risk profiles vary by sector and geography. Local stakeholders, such as non-governmental organisations, community-based organisations, and local financial service providers, are critical to effective implementation.

2. Across local contexts, scaling adaptation finance requires an all-of-ecosystem approach

The central challenge is bridging the structural gap between large-scale capital providers and smaller-ticket adaptation needs. This will take stronger ecosystem coordination between these parties, more flexible financing structures, as well as better alignment between investors, intermediaries, and on-the-ground implementers.

3. Blended finance is a key enabler but face replicability, structuring, and scale challenges

There can be greater clarity at the outset on how and when projects could transition from receiving blended finance to fully commercial funding. This requires designing structures that not only crowd in capital in the short term, but also build the underlying risk-return profile, data track record, and scalability needed to attract purely private investors over the longer term.

4. Building common standards and market infrastructure is crucial

A lack of consistent metrics and reporting standards across development finance institutions, private investors, and standard-setting bodies makes it difficult to compare opportunities, aggregate pipelines, and mobilise institutional capital efficiently. Greater alignment on shared outcomes and stronger coordination across actors can help opportunities attract more investment.

These discussions affirmed that a systems-level approach is essential to strengthening climate adaptation and resilience and improving adaptation financing flows.

Philanthropy can play a catalytic role by funding experimentation and helping create commercially scalable adaptation opportunities before institutional capital enters. For example, Gates Foundation has invested US$1.4B to scale farmer-led, evidence-backed innovations to help farmers across sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia adapt to extreme weather.

A key discussion topic in the Temasek-led segment was whether impact authenticity can be achieved along with scale, and what bridging the scale gap would require otherwise.

In a fireside chat moderated by Mr. Benoit Valentin, Head of Impact Investing, Temasek, Mr. Urs Wietlisbach, Co-Founder, Blue Earth Capital stressed the importance of maintaining commercial models in impact investing, as well as adopting an impact lens to better understand the needs and scale of a given market, as well as additional areas requiring due diligence. There was shared conviction that impact investing can be profitable over the long term as well as genuinely impactful.

Mr. Benoit Valentin, Head of Impact Investing, Temasek and Mr. Urs Wietlisbach, Co-Founder, Blue Earth Capital, speaking in the Fireside Founders Chat.

The subsequent panel discussion focused on what scaling impact capital credibly looks like in practice. Commercial returns remain key to attracting large institutional asset owners. Blended finance structures can help channel large pools of capital towards the areas that need it more, such as emerging markets and higher-risk strategies, by redistributing risk across the capital stack. Innovation in both business models and financing structures are also key to successfully scaling impact capital.

Temasek’s Ms. Eliza Foo moderating a panel with Mr. Patrick Kanters, Chief Investment Officer, Private Investments, APG, Ms. Jennifer Park, Partner, ALTÉRRA, and Mr. Jim Sorenson, Founder and Chairman, Sorenson Impact Foundation.

In his concluding remarks for the session, Mr. Valentin asserted that the next phase of impact investing will be defined by execution: building investable pipelines, structuring risk properly, creating repeatable models, and measuring outcomes rigorously.

“To make progress, the sector will require asset owners, GPs, companies, catalytic capital, and ecosystem builders working together consistently. The next decade will be about building capability to deploy at scale, structure more intelligently, and bring different forms of capital together,” he said.

Mr. Benoit Valentin, Head of Impact Investing, Temasek, closing the session.

CIIP’s report is the first of a series dedicated to climate adaptation and resilience in Asia. It will continue to contribute updated sector maps and funding flow dashboards publicly and invite more partners to join them for future editions.

CIIP is a non-profit entity established by Temasek Trust in 2022 to foster impact investing and practices in Asia and beyond, and contribute towards a sustainable future for all. To learn more, visit CIIP’s website and follow them on LinkedIn.

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