Future Asia Pacific Insights

This policy brief summarizes a UNEP foresight workshop held in Bangkok in December 2023, where 42 academics and practitioners from 15 countries in Asia and the Pacific discussed plausible future scenarios for the region leading up to 2050. The discussions focused on the interplay between human activities and the environment, specifically examining the roles of technology, cultural values, and power relations in shaping planetary health and human well-being.

• Artificial intelligence (AI) and big data offer significant opportunities for environmental management, including improving natural resource governance, supporting food security through regenerative agriculture, and developing green, smart cities. However, these technologies also pose risks such as widening inequality via technology monopolization, enabling surveillance and the management of dissent, and potentially causing a loss of connection with nature and traditional norms.
• The preservation and revival of Indigenous and traditional ecological knowledge are considered vital for addressing biodiversity loss and climate change. There is a concern that the rapid advancement of technology may replace these traditions and lead to a disproportionate educational focus on STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) at the expense of the social sciences, humanities, and arts.
• Future power relations in Asia and the Pacific could diverge between scenarios of increased exploitation and empowerment. Risks include the dominance of family dynasties and the private sector over governments, the carbon market primarily benefiting affluent countries and corporations, and high-income countries dominating resource access, which could lead to displacement, gentrification, and conflict.
• To transform the region's consumerist and resource-exploitative economic model, participants suggested moving away from GDP as the primary measure of economic health in favor of non-economic indicators such as happiness indices and ecological footprints. Other proposed economic interventions include debt relief for low-income countries, reforming multilateral banks, and providing financial incentives for sustainability-driven SMEs.
• Improving governance for planetary health requires strengthening accountability mechanisms, investing in justice systems, and enhancing transboundary cooperation for climate risks, specifically mentioning the need to increase the capacities of institutions like the Mekong River Commission.
• Centering rights, equity, and justice is essential to ensure that marginalized groups, such as fisherfolk, are not left behind during the environmental transition. This involves establishing legal frameworks that recognize the rights of nature and human rights, protecting environmental defenders, and integrating traditional ecological knowledge into educational curricula.

APA

Stockholm Environment Institute (2024). Future Asia Pacific Insights. https://www.sei.org/publications/future-asia-pacific-insights/

Chicago

Stockholm Environment Institute. Future Asia Pacific Insights. 2024. https://www.sei.org/publications/future-asia-pacific-insights/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Stockholm Environment Institute |title=Future Asia Pacific Insights |date=15 March 2024 |url=https://www.sei.org/publications/future-asia-pacific-insights/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{stockholmenvironmentinstitute2024future, author = {{Stockholm Environment Institute}}, title = {{Future Asia Pacific Insights}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2024}, month = mar, url = {https://www.sei.org/publications/future-asia-pacific-insights/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }