The complexities of the climate crisis are no better exemplified than in Asia. As a diverse region with hot-humid, tropical, and sub-tropical climatic profiles, people across the region are facing increasingly frequent and intense climate events. These include cyclones, flooding, heatwaves, landslides, and droughts, which are displacing millions, destroying livelihoods, and threatening food and water security. Home to more than half of the global population, many of the most exposed countries in the world to climatic risks are based in Asia.
This extreme risk exposure, coupled with high-density, massive populations, developing and emerging economies, and rampant inequality, paints a picture of a region which will have climate change as a fundamental driver of its future pathway. The region is responsible for approximately 40% of global greenhouse emissions, largely contributed by China, India, Japan, South Korea and Indonesia due to their reliance on fossil fuels. Despite their commitment to net zero emissions and having a treasure trove of untapped resources for renewable energy, Southeast Asia remains particularly entrenched in fossil fuels, with slow progress on emissions reductions and limited prospects for future decarbonatization. Climate change is projected to lead to GDP losses of 24% across Asia by 2100Asia Pacific Climate Report, Asian Development Bank, 2024.
Underrepresented and structurally excluded groups are particularly affected. A significant proportion of Asia’s population live below the poverty line, with 9% living on less than $2.15 per day Global Poverty Update, World Bank, June 2025. Livelihoods of low-income coastal and agrarian communities are under threat. Similarly, people living fragile mountainous regions are threatened by glacial retreat and thawing of permafrost, which not only affects local water systems and agriculture but also impacts billions of people downstream. Women bear the increasing burden of unpaid care work exacerbated by climate impacts. Indigenous people are being displaced from their ancestral lands due to deforestation, large scale infrastructure projects and extractive industries. Climate-induced displacement and migration is emerging as a critical issue forcing people to reside in high-risk areas, often without government support. Unable to sustain their livelihoods, people are often pushed to migrate internationally often using illegal means, leading to a multitude of risks, including increasing resistance from transit or destination countries.
Climate injustices in Asia are deeply intertwined with historical and structural inequalities. The legacy of colonial resource dispossession, extractive development and unfair trade rules continue to shape the region’s economic and environmental vulnerabilities. Reducing climate risk is a key ambition for governments in the region. However, the challenges of doing so are being compounded as the climate crisis continues to worsen. As a result, most of the countries in Asia are trapped in cycles of climate-induced loss and damage, compounded by shrinking fiscal space and insufficient international climate finance.
Across the region there is a growing momentum for change. Despite shrinking civic space, youth-led climate campaigns, Indigenous land defenders, women rights organizations, and farmers’ collectives and trade unions are calling for locally rooted solutions, and to address climate change as systemic issue linked to economic and social justice. From community-led disaster risk reduction to agroecological farming by rural communities to women-led renewable energy programs, transformative models are emerging across the region. These efforts are a critical entry point to invest in scalable, justice-centered climate solutions.
There is also increasing political attention to the climate crisis among governments in the region, and cooperation platforms like ASEAN’s Centre for Energy, and the upcoming Centre for Climate Change are gearing up to tackle climate issues at transboundary scale. Several least developed countries in the region including Bangladesh, Laos and Nepal are graduating from their LDC status by 2026 which opens up both challenges and opportunities – including that donor prioritization of LDCs will force these countries to find alternative sources of financing for development and climate.
1) Strengthening Movements and Activism
Civic space is shrinking in many parts of Asia, where activists across the region face surveillance, criminalization and violence. Yet, movements persist and adapt. Human rights and land rights defenders, indigenous networks, feminist organizations, economic justice campaigners continue to lead campaigns on land rights, environmental protection and climate justice. There is also a strong group of campaigners against harmful investments of international financial institutions.
Oxfam and CAN have the capacity and legitimacy to bring together movements across Asia that are often disjointed and struggle to find spaces to come together. Oxfam supports partners and allies across the region to protect civic space and foster cross-sectoral alliances particularly focused on strengthening youth movements and feminist groups. We support youth groups to come together, strategize and build mobilization capacity. This includes fellowships and mentorship, seed funding to organize popular mobilization activities around major global climate events and ensure youth voices are heard in key climate spaces. We have also supported initiation of Asia Feminist Coalition who are promoting feminist narratives on just energy transition and care centered climate action. Similarly, we have provided convening spaces to CSOs on issues of just energy transition and climate finance.
Oxfam in Asia runs a flagship campaign to ‘Make Climate Finance Work for Asia’ geared towards shifting narrative and influencing policy change using engaging social and digital products. We work with journalists across the region to cover emotionally engaging and evidence-based stories of climate impacts and actions including covering climate change with a human-interest lens. The annual Asia Media Forum organized by Oxfam brings together journalists from across the region, with climate change as a key discussion topic.
More importantly, Oxfam’s climate action initiatives in Asia focus on institutionalising practices and processes that are accountable to communities, and equipping them with tools and spaces to demand action, remedy from harm or push back against the lack of action.
2) Mobilizing Climate Finance for Fair Climate Action
Oxfam’s 2022 State of Climate Finance in Asia report showed that the 18 countries in South and Southeast Asia received only $113 billion in international climate finance from 2013 to 2020, where needs stand at $1.3 trillion per year until 2030. Only a tiny portion of this woefully limited finance reaches the local communities. The same study revealed that only about 0.5% of the available climate finance can be termed locally led meaning that local communities and governments don’t have a say in how the climate finance is mobilized and utilized.
Most of the available climate finance in Asia comes in the form of loans rather than grants. The largest single provider of climate finance in the region is Asian Development Bank, which provides only 12% in grant equivalent finance, followed by the World Bank group whose international bank for reconstruction and development provides 0% grant equivalent climate finance. The heavy reliance on loans is increasing the debt burden of climate vulnerable countries. More worryingly, due to geopolitical tensions and prioritization of military spending, funding for climate is decreasing. This further exacerbates the situation of vulnerable countries in Asia which are already seeing large gaps between need and availability of funding.
Oxfam and the regional nodes of CAN play an important role in exposing the lack of climate finance, the dominance of multilateral development banks and their over-reporting of the actual climate finance provided. We build the capacity of civil society in tracking and monitoring climate finance allocations and expenditure by using guidance and toolkits such as the Climate Finance Accountability Initiative.
We aim to overcome the challenges in access to climate finance by equipping civil society in tracking climate finance flowing form international level to the local level, demand accountability from donors and international financial institutions and fostering South – South collaboration. This includes sharing of good practices and engaging policy makers in the region through regional mechanisms such as the ASEAN and SAARC as well as through China’s south-south regional cooperation initiative. There are several other regional intergovernmental groupings such as the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation which promotes environmental and climate collaboration and can be a vital body to link climate action in South Asia and Southeast Asia.
3) Supporting Local Adaptation to Build Resilience
Initiatives to promote locally led adaptation are already taking place across the region, though often underfunded and unrecognized. Oxfam and our partners have supported adaptation through facilitating community-led planning processes, promoting women-led, nature-based solutions, and linking adaptation programs with humanitarian and disaster resilience programs. Several initiatives have supported local governments in developing local climate adaptation plans and integrating them with budgetary processes, which require further scaling and expansion.
Innovative mechanisms such as parametric insurance are being piloted to transfer climate risks of the local communities. We implement multi-country programs on water governance, climate resilience and strengthening early warning systems that have transformed lives and safeguarded against climate extremes. Our programs on agro-ecology and seed protection have empowered farmers to build resilience and enhance food-security.
4) Advancing a Just Energy Transition
Approximately 66 million people in Asia still lack access to energy, while the region’s energy demand continues to grow. Many economies across the region remain dependent on fossil fuels and extractive industries, while international financial institutes push for continued expansion of false solutions such as fossil gas.
Oxfam is advancing the Just Energy Transition agenda through multiple initiatives including influencing Just Energy Transition in projects and tracking financial flows for energy through the Fair Finance Asia program. Our emphasis is on the gendered impacts of Energy Transition Mechanism and Just Energy Transition Partnership. We have also conducted research on transition mineral assessing the revenues of extractive industries and engaged in the EITI, the transition mineral transparency initiative. Oxfam’s research has exposed violations of human rights in renewables supply chains, highlighting the urgent need to reimagine renewables with principles of justice and equity. We work to change the system in which the burden of the waste from renewables is put on developing countries in Asia while countries in the global North enjoy the benefits of consumption of renewable energy.
At the country level Oxfam works to strengthen country networks and to engage with various actors and at the regional level has partnership with ASEAN Center for Energy to implement the ASEAN Renewable Energy and Gender Road Map. This is focused on enabling a regional policy framework to promote gender just and inclusive energy transition as well as supporting countries and partners in piloting and modelling equitable energy transition solutions. CANSEA and Oxfam collaborate to implement I-Just Energy Transition initiative including co-convening regional Just Energy Transition networks to share information, knowledge and promote learning. We also work with the communities to enhance access to renewable energy and promote productive use of energy through approaches such as community-led renewable energy and productive use of renewable energy bringing together communities, local suppliers and government to expand community-led solutions.