Climate Asia · Est. 2023
The infrastructure for locally led climate action
across Asia.
The Stakes
The risk is no longer distant. The case for adaptation has never been stronger.
By the numbers
Adaptation is not a cost. It is the highest-return investment available to the region.
of GDP at risk by 2050 in the most exposed Asian economies under current policies — with the lowest-income, hottest countries hit hardest. Source: World Bank, Jobs in a Changing Climate, 2025.
the equivalent of "more and better-paid jobs" projected to be lost across low- and middle-income countries by 2050 without intervention. Source: World Bank, 2025.
people displaced by climate disasters in Asia Pacific in 2024 — more than half the global total. Source: IDMC, Global Report on Internal Displacement 2025.
Who we are
Asia is the region most exposed to climate shocks and the region with the largest reservoir of solutions already in motion. We build the architecture to connect the two.
We equip frontline organisations. We embed gender into delivery. We move capital to where outcomes hold. Locally led solutions don't just survive. They scale.
What We Do
Three pillars. One architecture.
We strengthen frontline organisations, build the workforce Asia's transition depends on, and embed gender as the multiplier that determines whether outcomes hold.
01 — Climate Resilience
Strengthening Frontline Adaptation
Climate shocks hit frontline communities first and hardest. The organisations closest to them — local CSOs, community institutions, grassroots networks — know what works. They are also the ones most often left out of how adaptation gets designed and funded. Less than 10% of adaptation finance reaches local actors.
We change that. Working with partners, funders and networks, we equip frontline organisations to anticipate climate shocks, absorb impact, recover faster, and transform the conditions that create vulnerability in the first place.
Goal: By 2030, support 500+ organisations across Asia, scaling locally led solutions that strengthen livelihoods and protect more than 10 million lives.
02 — Green Jobs
Building Asia's Clean Energy Workforce
The World Bank estimates climate change could erase the equivalent of 260 million jobs across low- and middle-income countries by 2050 — and that adaptation and clean energy investment can prevent more than half of those losses. Asia sits at the centre of that calculation.
Millions of jobs are being created in solar, wind, EV, and grid infrastructure. The talent pipelines, training systems, and placement networks have not caught up. The World Bank's own framing has shifted from "green jobs" to "in-demand and at-risk jobs" — recognising that the transition is not a binary swap but a complex labour market reallocation.
We work with CSOs, training institutions and employers to close that gap: building the talent infrastructure that turns climate ambition into climate jobs, with deliberate focus on workers and geographies the transition risks leaving behind.
Goal: Support pathways into clean energy work for 1 million workers across Asia by 2037 — anchoring the workforce that Asia's transition depends on.
03 — Women's Leadership
Gender as a Mitigation Multiplier
Women are not the beneficiaries of climate action. They are its primary delivery mechanism. They make the majority of household energy decisions, anchor agricultural systems across Asia's most climate-critical geographies, and drive the behaviour change that determines whether mitigation outcomes hold.
The evidence is now in the data. Côte d'Ivoire's climate-smart cashew sector created over 18,300 jobs between 2015 and 2023 — 66% of them held by women. Where gender is treated as core architecture, programmes deliver. Where it is treated as an add-on, they under-deliver.
EquiLead works with CSOs and funders to fix this, embedding gender into program design, data systems, and leadership pipelines. Not as an equity add-on. As a mitigation multiplier.
The economic case is settled. The question is whether action reaches the organisations closest to the frontline, fast enough.
About our Accelerator ProgramVoices of Change
Leading the
climate
conversation
“Every challenge posed by climate change is an opportunity to innovate, adapt, and lead. At Climate Asia, we are not just responding to the crisis. We are backing a generation of changemakers building the resilient economy Asia needs.”
Our Work
From the frontlines.
Hover any card to read how communities across Asia are turning local insight into climate impact.
Case Study 01 · CSO Leadership · Pan-Asia
The Missing Middle: Building Second-Line Leadership Across the Region
Founders anchor most climate CSOs across Asia. The layer beneath them is chronically underdeveloped. When that layer is thin, organisations stall.
Hover to read more →
Case Study 01 · CSO Leadership · Pan-Asia
The Missing Middle: Building Second-Line Leadership Across the Region
Climate Asia's leadership program addresses this directly: a structured engagement for second-in-line leaders from frontline climate CSOs across South and Southeast Asia. Through curriculum, peer cohorts, and one-on-one coaching, we equip the leaders most CSOs can't afford to develop internally — but can't afford to lose.
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Leaders trained from frontline CSOs
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Countries represented in cohort
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Retention / promotion metric
Case Study 02 · Climate Talent
Hiring as Infrastructure
Asia's climate transition has a human capital constraint. We built shared infrastructure to solve it — for thirty organisations at once.
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Case Study 02 · Climate Talent
Hiring as Infrastructure
Climate Asia reimagined hiring as shared infrastructure. We designed and piloted a centralised HR Project Management Unit, supporting thirty climate organisations over six months — co-creating roles, building structured hiring systems, and embedding capacity-building through toolkits and peer networks.
30
Climate organisations supported
45
Roles closed in 90 days
6
Months to build lasting capability
Case Study 03 · Gender Integration · EquiLead
Gender as Architecture, Not Add-On
Climate programs routinely under-deliver because they are designed without the people anchoring household energy, agricultural systems, and behaviour change at the centre. EquiLead fixes this at the design layer.
Hover to read more →
Case Study 03 · Gender Integration · EquiLead
Gender as Architecture, Not Add-On
Through targeted partnership, EquiLead works with frontline CSOs to audit existing programs, redesign program architecture, and build gender-disaggregated MEL systems — moving gender from a line item in a logframe to a core variable in how programs are built, measured, and scaled.
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CSOs supported
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Programs redesigned with gender integration
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Women reached / leadership pipeline metric
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