Financing Urban Resilience in Southeast Asia: The Do’s, Don’ts and Possibilities

About this event

Bangkok floods. Ho Chi Minh City's monsoons arrive earlier each year. Manila and Jakarta race to outbuild rising seas. Across Southeast Asia, the capital to protect these cities exists — green bonds, blended finance, resilience funds are all growing markets — yet it consistently fails to reach the municipal projects and vulnerable communities that need it most. Why does the money stall between ambition and asphalt? Most conversations on climate finance start from the investment side and work backwards. This session starts from the science — how climate risk is measured and where it will hit hardest — and works forward to what that means for bankable, inclusive projects. Led jointly by Dr. Chow, co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Dr. Cojoianu from Asia's leading green finance research centre, it puts that question to financiers, city officials, and researchers, and doesn't stop at diagnosis: it names what actually works (the Do's), what quietly kills good projects before they're funded (the Don'ts), and where the next wave of scalable, inclusive financing is heading (the Possibilities) — an ongoing SMU research dialogue with ASEAN universities, institutes, and regional lenders and investors. Join our speakers in an interactive discussion where climate science is made to answer to the balance sheet. Speakers: Dr. Winston Chow Lee Kong Chian Professor of Urban Climate Pillar Lead, Urban Systems Co-Chair, Working Group II, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Singapore Management University Dr. Theodor Cojoianu Associate Professor of Sustainable Finance Urban Fellow (Urban Growth) Academic Director, Singapore Green Finance Centre Singapore Management University