Ho Chi Minh City, 22–25 September 2026: As climate change intensifies storms, floods, droughts, and saline intrusion, the fiscal burden of recovery is rising across ASEAN, putting pressure on public budgets, supply chains, and rural livelihoods. As one of the regions most vulnerable to climate change and disasters, ASEAN faces an economic imperative to move from reactive disaster response towards proactive, well-financed resilience.

To address this challenge, ERIA, in collaboration with the Institute of Strategy and Policy on Agriculture and Environment (ISPAE) of Viet Nam’s Ministry of Agriculture and Environment, convened the international workshop ‘From Risk Management to Resilience Imperative: Innovating Disaster Finance for Climate-Resilient Growth in ASEAN and Beyond’ in Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam. The four-day workshop brought together more than 40 policymakers, researchers, and practitioners from ASEAN and beyond, alongside participants from Ho Chi Minh City.

Opening and Keynote Remarks

In his opening remarks, Jeremy Gross, Director of Mekong Affairs and Capacity Building at ERIA, noted that many of those attending the workshop had worked together regularly over the past decade, yet the crises were becoming more acute, underscoring the growing urgency of mobilising inclusive financing for climate resilience. He also welcomed participants from Timor-Leste as the country’s participation in the workshop followed its accession as a full ASEAN Member State.

Delivering welcome remarks on behalf of ISPAE, Deputy Director Dr Mai Thanh Dung underscored the importance of disaster risk reduction and climate vulnerability assessment for Viet Nam and the region, and highlighted ongoing national initiatives in these areas. He noted that the workshop’s outcomes would serve as valuable input to the Government of Viet Nam and to wider ASEAN co-operation.

In the keynote address, Krishna Putra Tanaja, Deputy Executive Director of the ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on Disaster Management (AHA Centre), noted that more than 90% of disasters in ASEAN over the past decade were hydrometeorological. He added that the region recorded an average of more than 1,400 disasters a year between 2021 and 2025. He stressed the importance of people-centred approaches and called for climate risk financing to be linked with disaster risk financing, stating: ‘The building blocks are already in place. We simply need to break the silos within.’

Dr Venkatachalam Anbumozhi, Senior Research Fellow for Innovation at ERIA, outlined ERIA’s past work and the workshop’s three objectives:

• Formulating evidence-based policy frameworks for ASEAN leadership;
• Evaluating innovative and inclusive financing mechanisms; and
• Strengthening gender-inclusive governance capacity.

He emphasised that closing the knowledge, capacity, and finance gaps requires the convergence of disaster risk management and climate change adaptation.

Risk Assessment, Nexus Interdependencies, and Regional Co-operation

The first day examined the science of climate and disaster risk.

• Session I: Vijayaraghavan Srivatsan (National University of Singapore) presented on climate impact modelling and artificial intelligence for food security in ASEAN. Meinhard Breiling (TU Wien) discussed trends in natural disasters and approaches to measuring their distributional impacts in the EU.
• Session II: Dr Anbumozhi and Yuki Kudoh (AIST) mapped energy, water, and food security interdependencies across ASEAN, the East Asia Summit, and the G20. Yuki Kudoh and Ruth Anne Gonocruz (AIST) then presented expert survey findings on integrated policies in EAS countries to manage trade-offs within the nexus.
• Session III: Mizan Bustanul Fuady Bisri (ADRC) examined multilevel resilience architecture under AADMER. Ta Duc Binh (ISPAE) presented Viet Nam’s climate and disaster risk finance landscape. He noted that nearly 70% of the country’s financing needs to 2040 relate to adaptation and resilience, and that financing instruments must be combined to make climate investment bankable.
• Session IV: Eiji Yamaji (University of Tokyo) shared Japan’s experience in spatial planning and rural disaster governance. Hyeon Tae Kim (Gyeongsang National University) discussed scaling smart agricultural technologies through public–private partnerships in the Republic of Korea.

Financing, Value Chains, and Inclusive Institutions

The second day focused on finance and governance.

• Session V: Ramraj Narasimhan (CDRI) called for reforming the global financial architecture to shift from relief to proactive risk financing. Ayadoure Srinivasane Stalin (Jawaharlal Nehru University) examined pathways to mobilise equitable, non-debt capital for climate-vulnerable countries.
• Session VI: Dr Anbumozhi and Haekal Akbar Kartasasmita (ERIA) presented how catastrophe risk pools, parametric insurance, and business continuity planning can de-risk regional supply chains. Murugesan Kumarasamy (Periyar University) shared community-based financing models for climate-resilient agriculture in India.
• Session VII, moderated by Jeremy Gross and Ly Sophanna (Ministry of Environment, Cambodia), addressed the institutional architecture for gender-sensitive resilient growth. Lead presentations were delivered by Yasuyuki Kono (Kyoto University), Lesly Gunaratnam (LITA Educational Trust), and Qwanrudee Chotichanathawewong (National Research Council of Thailand). A country panel followed on institutional architecture, cross-sectoral co-ordination, community funds, and legal frameworks, featuring:
  • Sonephet Phosalath (Ministry of Agriculture and Environment, Lao PDR)
  • Nilton Ribeiro and Juliberto dos Santos (Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Forestry, Timor-Leste)
  • Than Than Sint (Centre for Economic and Social Development, Myanmar)
  • Paramaspary Arjunan (Attorney General’s Chambers, Malaysia)

The day concluded with a virtual presentation by Raymond Zingg, Asia Pacific Anticipatory Action Coordinator at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), on mobilising regional co-operation for anticipatory action and local disaster readiness.

Discussions underscored that ASEAN does not lack frameworks; the challenge lies in implementation. Participants highlighted the need to shift from ex post to ex ante financing and to connect fragmented financial instruments. They also stressed that disaggregated data on who bears climate risk should inform planning and budgeting decisions.

On the third day, participants visited the University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City (UEH), where they engaged with senior administrators and academics to exchange information about research of interest to their respective home institutions and opportunities for possible future collaboration.

Updating Resilience Roadmaps

The final day was dedicated to peer-to-peer learning to update the national resilience roadmaps for Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, and Viet Nam, originally developed for ERIA’s 2019 study ‘Towards a Resilient ASEAN’. Government officials and national experts from each country worked in groups consisting of Meach Yady (Cambodia), Ly Sophanna (Cambodia), Chanseng Phongpachith (Lao PDR), Sonephet Phosalath (Lao PDR), and Than Than Sint (Myanmar), supported by international experts. They were joined by Nilton Ribeiro and Juliberto dos Santos (Timor-Leste), who began developing Timor-Leste’s first national resilience roadmap.

Each group assessed the reliability of existing climate and disaster risk data, the roles of different stakeholders, sectoral policy priorities, and capacity-building needs for the next 5–15 years. The groups then set out short-, medium-, and long-term actions with designated lead agencies and presented their draft roadmaps in the afternoon session.

In the wrap-up session led by Dr Anbumozhi, participants agreed that key messages from the co-chairs’ summaries would be consolidated into policy recommendations and shared with the Government of Viet Nam as input to ASEAN processes. The findings will be published by ERIA as a series of thematic issue briefs, together with a compendium of the updated country roadmaps.

In closing, Jeremy Gross described the workshop as ‘the end of the road of the workshop, but certainly not the end of the road for our work together’. He also acknowledged the support of the Government of Australia through ERIA’s Capacity-Building Programme, which enabled the participation of delegates from Cambodia, Lao PDR, and Timor-Leste.

The workshop outcomes will directly feed into the implementation of the ASEAN Framework on Anticipatory Action in Disaster Management, which focuses on forward-thinking, pre-arranged financing, and early-warning risk systems, and the ASEAN Climate Change Strategic Action Plan (ACCSAP) 2025–2030.