Speeches
Speech by Singapore's Ambassador for Climate Action at Nature Means Business
18 May 2026
Read the speech by Singapore's Ambassador for Climate Action on strategies for a nature-positive Southeast Asia.
Strategies for a Nature-Positive Southeast Asia
Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon.
NATURE IS FOUNDATIONAL
Nature is under unprecedented strain.
Forests are shrinking.
Mangroves are disappearing.
Biodiversity is declining at alarming speed.
The depletion of the world’s natural capital demands our urgent attention and action. Nature is foundational to humanity.
Nature provides the ecological services upon which societies and economies depend.
These services are not peripheral. They are essential.
Forests regulate rainfall and stabilise water supplies.
Coral reefs support fisheries and coastal livelihoods.
Healthy soils sustain agriculture.
More than half of global GDP is moderately or highly dependent on nature. [i]
Agriculture, food and beverage, tourism, construction, pharmaceuticals, and data centres need reliable water systems, fertile soils, and predictable climatic conditions to function effectively.
Nature plays a critical role in climate change mitigation.
Historically, the world’s forests, oceans, mangroves, peatlands, and other ecosystems have absorbed more than half of human-caused carbon emissions.
But we are steadily degrading these natural systems.
When forests are cut down or peatlands drained, they not only stop absorbing carbon dioxide; they release vast quantities of stored carbon back into the atmosphere.
This is pertinent to Southeast Asia, where protecting and restoring just two ecosystems - peatlands and mangroves – can mitigate about half of the region’s land use carbon emissions. [ii]
Nature is indispensable for climate adaptation and resilience.
As climate impacts intensify, nature-based solutions can help societies adapt to a warmer and more volatile world.
Forests regulate river flows and reduce the risks of flooding and soil erosion.
Mangroves absorb storm surges and protect vulnerable coastlines.
Urban green spaces lower temperatures and reduce urban heat effects.
These interventions are important in Asia, where many of the world’s most climate-vulnerable populations live — in coastal cities, delta regions, and heat-stressed urban centres.
NATURE IS UNDER-INVESTED
But we are investing only a fraction of what is needed for nature.
Globally, US$200 billion a year is channelled towards nature-based solutions, the bulk of which comes from public sources. This leaves an annual gap of US$700 billion.[iii]
There are three reasons why nature is under-invested.
First, most of nature’s value is not priced.
This is the foundational market failure: markets do not price what nature provides.
The carbon sequestered by a mangrove forest, the flood protection it provides to a coastal village, the nursery habitat it offers to fisheries worth billions — none of these appear on any balance sheet.
They are what economists call externalities: real value, delivered to real people, but captured by nobody.
Second, nature has a measurement challenge.
The outcomes of nature projects are complex, variable, and difficult to quantify.
How much carbon does a particular mangrove stand sequester?
What happens to emissions if the restored forest is disturbed ten years from now?
High-profile failures in the voluntary carbon market — where several major forest conservation projects were found to have vastly over-credited their carbon outcomes — have damaged confidence in nature-based carbon credits.
Third, most nature projects are not bankable.
Most nature projects, as currently structured, struggle to attract private capital.
Their governance is complex, involving multiple stakeholders.
Their revenue models are thin, their returns are long-duration.
And their transaction costs — for due diligence, structuring, legal work, and impact verification — are high relative to project size.
The result is a classic market failure.
There is capital looking for nature projects. There are nature projects that need capital. But the projects are not structured in a way that connects the two.
STRATEGIES TO SCALE NATURE-BASED SOLUTIONS IN ASIA
Carbon markets offer a way to narrow the financing gap faced by nature projects —by monetising conservation and restoration into recurring revenue.
Because they are scalable and cost-effective, nature-based carbon credits are an attractive option for sovereign buyers to meet their national climate targets and for companies to offset residual emissions on the path to net zero.
MSCI estimates that the market for nature-based carbon credits could be worth at least US$5 billion in 2030, and up to US$200 billion by 2050. [iv]
And Southeast Asia holds 30% of the world’s potential in nature-based solutions —notably in Indonesia, Cambodia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. [v]
Singapore has been working on a framework for a vibrant nature-based carbon credit market in Asia.
We have been in active consultations with key partners in the ecosystem.
There are three broad strategies that are emerging:
get environmental integrity right
unlock demand for nature-based carbon credits
catalyse the supply of nature projects
GET ENVIRONMENTAL INTEGRITY RIGHT
Let me start with environmental integrity – to build a foundation of trust by ensuring that nature-based projects deliver on their promised climate benefits.
First, continue to strengthen integrity frameworks.
The Core Carbon Principles established by the Integrity Council for Voluntary Carbon Markets sets rigorous quality thresholds for high-integrity carbon credits, including for nature.
Verra’s latest reforestation and conservation methodologies have received approval under the Core Carbon Principles label.
Standard setters and crediting programmes must continue updating methodologies to keep pace with advances in remote sensing and carbon accounting.
Second, invest in high-quality solutions for MRV (monitoring, reporting, verification).
Singapore is investing in technology solutions to enhance environmental integrity in nature-based carbon projects.
The National Research Foundation is co-funding Carbon Integrity SG, a S$15 million programme to improve the carbon stock estimations of South-east Asia’s mangroves, forests, and peatlands. [vi]
The National Space Agency has issued a grant call for the use of satellite, geospatial, and digital technologies to improve how biomass is measured, monitored, and verified across ecosystems – including forests and coastal environments.
The Economic Development Board is working with the Worldwide Fund for Nature to enhance MRV capabilities for blue carbon projects in Asia. [vii]
UNLOCK DEMAND FOR NATURE-BASED CREDITS
Next, unlocking demand for nature-based credits.
First, engage constructively with high-integrity nature carbon markets.
I understand companies’ reticence after the reputational damage of recent years. But the answer to a flawed market is not exit — it is reform and higher standards.
The international Coalition to Grow Carbon Markets, which Singapore co‑chairs, has put out a set of shared principles to guide companies on how to use high‑integrity carbon credits—including nature credits.
I call on companies to support these efforts. Set your standards high and buy nature credits that meet them.
Second, signal demand through buyer’s coalitions and offtake agreements.
Buyer coalitions can aggregate demand, give project developers forward revenue certainty, and reduce the reputational risk for individual buyers.
Offtake agreements and advance purchase agreements are especially useful for early-stage projects, because they turn uncertain future credit sales into bankable cashflow.
Promising initiatives are emerging in the voluntary market for nature-based removal credits, such as the Symbiosis Coalition [viii], which provides advance commitments for high-integrity restoration projects.
Singapore has been sending strong demand signals in the nature-based credits market.
Singapore has contracted nature-based credits worth S$76 million across four projects in Ghana, Peru, and Paraguay. These projects aim to:
reduce carbon emissions from deforestation
increase soil carbon storage through improved agricultural management, and
remove carbon through the reforestation of degraded lands.
Singapore is working with other like-minded governments, to grow demand for high quality forest conservation credits through the Forest and Climate Leaders’ Partnership Jurisdictional REDD+ Coalition.
The Coalition aims to mobilise US$3-6 billion a year by 2030 to protect tropical forests through carbon markets and results-based payments.
CATALYSE THE SUPPLY OF NATURE PROJECTS
Even with strong demand signals, many nature-based projects struggle to get off the ground. We need to also catalyse the supply-side of the equation.
First, invest in project preparation and pipeline development.
The most critical bottleneck in nature financing is not the absence of willing investors. It is the absence of investment-ready projects.
Proposals from potential nature project developers are often rejected because of gaps in climate-risk data, technical capacity, and bankable project design.
This is where multilateral development banks, philanthropies and foundations come in: to put resources into feasibility analysis, project structuring, and impact frameworks.
It is unglamorous work. But it is the foundation on which supply rests.
Second, scale blended finance for nature-based solutions.
Governments and other providers of concessional capital can use grants, guarantees, and first-loss instruments to de-risk nature investments and crowd in private capital.
We can take a leaf from blended finance platforms operating in Asia.
The Financing Asia's Transition Partnership, or FAST-P, aims to mobilise up to US$5 billion on the back of a US$500 million grant commitment from the Singapore government.
The Asian Development Bank's Nature Solutions Finance Hub aims to mobilise at least US$2 billion in private finance for nature projects across Asia and the Pacific.[ix]
In the nature space, private capital need not come from financial institutions alone. They can also come from companies sourcing commodities from Asian ecosystems.
Corporate commitments to source sustainable palm oil, timber, soy, and seafood are valuable.
But they are more effective if complemented by investment in the smallholder farmers, fishing communities, and local governments that manage these resources.
CONCLUSION
Nature-based solutions sit at the intersection of three critical priorities for Southeast Asia:
food and water security
decarbonisation
resilience to climate change
To build a vibrant nature-based carbon credit market, we need three things:
We need integrity, so that nature credits are trusted.
We need demand, so that nature has a revenue stream.
We need supply, so that developers can bring investment-ready projects to market.
The ecosystems we are debating are not abstractions.
They are the forests that families in the highlands of Borneo have depended on for generations.
They are the mangroves that shield fishing villages in the Philippines from the sea.
They are the coral reefs that support food security for millions across Southeast Asia.
If we lose them, we lose lives, we lose livelihoods.
So let us protect what remains, restore what has been degraded, and finance what works.
Let us build a nature-positive Southeast Asia.
[iii] The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) highlights a $700 billion yearly gap through 2030 to meet conservation targets. (UNEP 2025)
[vi] NUS to lead $15 million research project to improve the credibility of nature-based carbon projects in Southeast Asia news.nus.edu.sg/nus-to-lead-s15-million-research-project-to-improve-the-credibility-of-nature-based-carbon-projects-in-southeast-asia/
[vii] Singapore launches two new nature-based carbon initiatives | Singapore EDB