Between Ambition and Trust: Tracking Southeast Asia’s Climate Transition

The latest United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report released in early September 2026 delivered a sobering notice. The world is set to cross the 1.5 degree Celsius global warming limit that 194 Parties to the Paris Agreement (minus the US) agreed to avoid hitting at all costs. This is the irreversible tipping point that scientists have been warning about for years. In other words, without concentrated and collective efforts to cut emissions, climate crises and the magnitude of disasters — from typhoons, cyclones, floods, to wildfires and the recent devastating Nepal landslide — will intensify.

Southeast Asia is entering a critical phase of its climate transition, one that coincides with the pursuit of long-term developmental goals but also contends with the promises and perils of AI technological development and robotics. The region must balance its rapidly rising energy demand against intensifying climate impacts, navigate the politics of who bears the costs of decarbonisation, and manage the geopolitics of the transition. In a world that breaches the 1.5 degree Celsius threshold, the question is no longer only how quickly Southeast Asia can cut emissions, but how individual countries can reach their respective long-term developmental ambitions, enhance people’s wellbeing and ease the developmental pains of AI and robotics, while also devoting time, resources and attention to meet adaptation needs and improve climate resilience.

Indonesia’s EMAS 2045 Vision, the Philippines’ Ambisyon Natin 2040 and Malaysia’s Ekonomi Madani aspire to uplift income levels while raising long-term economic competitiveness, providing better jobs and equitable livelihoods and nurturing public trust in institutions to enable policy implementation. The difficulty for many Southeast Asian countries is in making an orderly and equitable transition from an over-reliance on coal and imported fossil fuels to alternative forms of renewable energy to grow their economies, even as governments rush to deal with negative fallout from intensifying storms, inundating floods and threatened food systems.

Southeast Asia is entering a critical phase of its climate transition, one that coincides with the pursuit of long-term developmental goals but also contends with the promises and perils of AI technological development and robotics.

The new Southeast Asia Climate Outlook 2026 (SEACO) survey suggests that people of the region are both anxious and hopeful that necessary trade-offs and solutions can be worked out. The biennial regional poll obtained responses from 3,706 individuals across 11 ASEAN countries, including Timor-Leste for the first time, with equal gender representation and proportionate sampling based on income levels.

The latest iteration, conducted over five weeks in June–July 2026, found that economic challenges such as unemployment and recessionary fears (55.3 per cent) top the list of challenges for Southeast Asia. Yet at the same time, climate change and extreme weather events rank very closely as the second biggest challenge (53.6 per cent), with only 1.7 percentage points between the two (Table 1). Climate-induced anxiety is far more prominent in the Philippines, Vietnam, Singapore and Malaysia — this is consistent with the Philippines’ and Vietnam’s high exposure to disaster risk — whereas economic concerns are prioritised in Indonesia, Brunei, Timor-Leste, Thailand and Cambodia. Domestic political stability is the third most important concern regionwide, but ranks higher among respondents from conflict-ridden Myanmar.

These findings suggest a growing convergence with The State of Southeast Asia, aregional survey of opinion leaders, that also saw climate change ranked as the top regional challenge for two consecutive years. This suggests that both the public and opinion leaders are cognisant of the common challenges that climate change poses.

Table 1. Top Three Challenges Facing Southeast Asia (SEACO2026)

Regional challenges	Percentage of respondents (%)
Unemployment and economic recession	55.3
Climate change and more extreme weather events (droughts, floods, typhoons, rising sea levels, etc.)	53.6
Domestic political instability (including ethnic and religious tensions, corruption)	46.0

Survey respondents’ fears related to the energy transition are pragmatic. When asked about concerns regarding shifting away from fossil fuels, the largest share reported cost of living (44.6 per cent) as their greatest fear, followed by energy shortages (26.1 per cent), a recent painful experience etched in memory by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz earlier this year.

Yet the findings show broad public support for a transition to clean energy. For the first time in the survey’s history, more than half of respondents say that governments should take decisive action against the use of coal, either by halting it immediately or actively switching to alternative fuels and closing existing coal-fired power plants (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Views on the Use of Coal Power According to Survey Respondents, Region-wide

Geopolitical factors beyond regional governments’ control, such as conflict elsewhere,  should galvanise efforts to fortify energy resilience and self-sufficiency by tapping into renewable energy (RE). According to the 8th ASEAN Energy Outlook, renewable energy only accounts for 15.6 per cent of Southeast Asia’s total primary energy supply, a dismally low figure in a region where installed RE power capacity stands at over 30 per cent. 

But simply building RE capacity, upgrading electricity grids, and closing coal plants are not sufficient. Ultimately, the general public in Southeast Asia still remains highly sensitive to the cost of energy, which explains why only 41 per cent of respondents support cutting fossil fuel subsidies, a drop from 43.8 per cent in 2024 (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Views on Fossil Fuel Subsidies According to Survey Respondents, Region-wide

Although the share of respondents favouring fuel subsidy reform is less than a majority, some encouragement can be derived from the smaller share that oppose the reform, while a sizable segment is unsure. The survey also provides some useful insight into the public’s preferred policy measures if reforms were implemented, with a substantial proportion of respondents expressing support for subsidy reallocations to climate loss and damage and other social programmes (40.3 per cent), and for increased financial support for clean energy transition (38.6 per cent). These findings suggest that there is room for informed public debate over reform while addressing issues of affordability and energy security concerns.

Such plans cannot be conducted in silos. Introducing new forms of market-based decarbonisation instruments can potentially work hand-in-glove with reform policies to bring about a low-carbon economic transformation. A substantial majority of survey respondents (62 per cent) say they will support a national carbon tax, with the highest share of support in Vietnam (83.0 per cent), Indonesia (72.8 per cent) and Thailand (68.3 per cent) (Figure 3). When asked if they would pay for the associated costs of a carbon tax policy, an overwhelming majority of 93.1 per cent say that they will take on a share of the burden, with higher-income respondents expressing greater willingness than lower-income respondents. These figures suggest a growing public appetite for market-based decarbonisation tools, particularly in Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand.

Figure 3. Views on a National Carbon Tax, by Country

The test of acceptable levels of ambition in Southeast Asian countries’ climate transition lies ultimately in the public’s trust and support. The survey reflects a regional populace that perceives financial and technical resources as greater barriers than the lack of political and societal support. The biggest obstacles to decarbonisation were insufficient financial resources (15.8 per cent), lack of R&D technology and expertise (14.8 per cent) and insufficient alternative energy resources (14.4 per cent) (Table 2). On the flip side, when asked about the smallest obstacle to decarbonisation, absence of public support followed by lack of private sector support were the least of the respondents’ concerns.  These findings suggest the presence of public and private sector buy-in for a low-carbon transition, alongside perceptions that financing, technology, and infrastructure shortfalls are the main constraints on decarbonisation efforts.

Table 2. Biggest Obstacles to Decarbonisation (SEACO2026)

Biggest obstacles to Decarbonisation (Top 3)	Percentage of respondents (%)
Insufficient financial resources	15.8
Lack of R&D, technology and expertise	14.8
Insufficient alternative energy resources	14.4

Countries will need to make trade-offs as they negotiate competing ambitions, pursue long-term socioeconomic goals and technological developments while handling climate mitigation challenges and adaptation needs. Each country must decide which climate measure or policy will leave them better or worse off in the long run. The 2026 Southeast Asia Climate Outlook survey underscores how public trust and support can foster that ambition, and how space for informed debate and discussion can be created.

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