As Malaysia takes on the Asean Chairmanship in 2025, it has a unique opportunity to champion a bold, legally binding regional framework for environmental rights. Such a framework would protect the people most affected by environmental degradation and hold corporations accountable for transboundary climate harm.
Chinese and American firms are seeking to export their autonomous driving technologies to Southeast Asia. The signal lesson is that their data-driven models require sensitivity and adaptation to the region’s diverse markets.
China's DeepSeek demonstrates that AI can be trained in a more efficient way and has enormous implications for Big Tech, which will be pressured to justify efforts to reduce climate impact.
The financing gap is huge, but time is short. Given the inadequacy of a promised new climate finance goal, Southeast Asia should look beyond UN-led conferences to crowd in other sources of capital to tackle the climate crisis.