How did Southeast Asia move forward on climate goals in 2024?

The Ngao River, a Mekong tributary, burst its banks flooding more than 2,000 Rai of pomelo orchards in late Aug-mid-Sept, photographed on Sept 20, 2024. Image courtesy of Rak Chiang Khong Conservation Group / International Rivers.

2024 was a year marked by a COP climate summit so dismal that many governments and analysts questioned whether the annual meetings are even worth holding. While world leaders failed to secure meaningful action, extreme weather events battered Southeast Asia, underscoring the deadly consequences of inaction on climate change and the urgent need for inclusive solutions.

An early summer heat wave that climate scientists said would have been “impossible” without the climate crisis saw temperatures soar across the region. Amid the deadly and unprecedented temperatures, farmers faced water shortages and ruined fruit and rice harvests. The onset of the wet season brought no respite, with intensified typhoons and flash floods taking a devastating toll on northern Vietnam, the Philippines and parts of Thailand. The storms left urban centers and farmland in tatters, displacing people, devastating crops and triggering deadly landslides.

Carbon market calamities

One mechanism aimed at countering global emissions to reduce to the likelihood and severity of these climatic tumults is the carbon market. However, the sale of carbon credits to offset fossil fuel emissions and reduce deforestation has come under increased scrutiny in Southeast Asia. The region is home to a significant portion of the world’s tropical forests, and carbon industry players reported that REDD+ projects here could generate up to $27.7 billion by 2050, with Southeast Asia’s broader carbon market touted as being capable of reaching nearly $3 trillion in the coming 25 years — provided the right policies are in place.

But with such vast sums of money at stake, questions are now being asked about the efficacy of REDD+ projects as scandals have emerged, alleging gross human rights abuses among some of Southeast Asia’s largest carbon-offsetting projects.

Cambodia’s Southern Cardamom REDD+ project was reinstated by carbon broker agency Verra in September 2024 after the sale of carbon credits from the project were suspended in June 2023.

Verra suspended the project after a Human Rights Watch investigation concluded that project developer Wildlife Alliance had failed to secure the free, prior and informed consent of local communities, who in turn claimed to have lost land and income as a result, as well as recounting often violent interactions with rangers working on the REDD+ project. Wildlife Alliance has consistently denied any wrongdoing.

Across the Southern Cardamom REDD+ project in southwest Cambodia, communities have alleged abuse at the hands of the project developer. Image by Gerald Flynn / Mongabay.

Land rights issues have embroiled REDD+ projects across Cambodia, with the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Keo Seima REDD+ project also coming under fire as Indigenous communities in the northeast of the country told Mongabay that they had also lost land and endured abuse at the hands of authorities in the name of conservation.

The myriad scandals engulfing the carbon market have created a crisis of confidence, leading Singapore to announce at the end of 2023 that it would exclude most REDD+ projects from bilateral trading agreements. Carbon offsetting is increasingly growing less popular as a means for companies to meet their own carbon-neutrality targets, although Vietnam received more than $51 million from the World Bank through the sale of verified emissions reductions.

Widespread efforts to restore mangroves in Thailand’s saw a government move to pair coastal communities with corporate partners to leverage carbon markets. The initiative drew widespread skepticism from environmental groups, who warned the scheme could effectively transform public forests into corporate lands.

Meanwhile, Laos has been making preparations and signing various partnerships to develop REDD+ projects across its roughly 16 million hectares (40 million acres) of forest, although experts have warned that such projects risk exacerbating land tenure issues and could easily follow the same mistakes as other projects by displacing people.

The Laeng Kao waterfall in Cambodia where the Bunong village of Andoung Kraloeng has been developing an eco-tourism site with support from the Keo Seima REDD+ project, even as the Ministry of Environment – the project proponent – has granted land overlapping with the site to private developers. WCS says the Ministry verbally committed to canceling private development but Minister of Environment Eang Sophalleth declined to confirm this. Image by Jack Brook.

The hidden cost of transition minerals

Another climate solution is the global drive to phase out fossil fuels. But this is also imposing renewed mining pressure on parts of Southeast Asia. Rapidly rising demand for minerals critical for the energy transition, such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper and rare earth elements, has seen harmful mining accelerate and spread to new locations, fueling human rights abuses, deforestation and environmental contamination.

Southeast Asia is home to some of the world’s largest reserves of transition minerals used for electric vehicles, wind turbines, solar panels and electric grids. Almost one-quarter of global nickel reserves are found in Indonesia, with the Philippines close behind, and Myanmar and Vietnam host significant deposits of rare earth minerals.

With Thailand pushing to establish itself as an EV manufacturing hub, and Vietnam emerging as a solar leader in Southeast Asia, governments and the private sector are clamoring to exploit mineral resources. Researchers, meanwhile, are urging caution and point to cases where communities and the environment have paid dearly. Multiple investigations have documented hundreds of human rights and ecological abuses linked to transition mineral mining, such as social unrest in Indonesia, forcible evictions in the Philippines, and contaminated waterways and pollution in Myanmar.

Biologist Aubrey Jayne Padilla said mining doesn’t just potentially affect Indigenous and farming communities, but also poses risks to the wildlife in the Philippines’ Victoria-Anepahan area. Image by Keith Anthony Fabro for Mongabay.

China’s outsourcing of its rare earth mining to bordering Myanmar expanded through 2024, according to investigations, where its effects are particularly insidious. With little social or environmental oversight amid the ongoing conflict in the country, profits are reportedly reaped by military-linked groups and fuel further conflicts.

Given the high risk of environmental degradation and human rights abuses making their way into global supply chains and household products, communities and rights groups are calling for improved transparency, inclusivity and environmental standards in the industry.

A few wins for the environment

Southeast Asia has long been a dangerous place for environmental activism and journalism, but while many activists faced insurmountable challenges, there were rare wins documented across the region and many communities continue to advocate for the future of the natural resources that sustain them.

Amid the ongoing conflict in Myanmar and its associated intensifying pressure on natural resources and land, Indigenous Karen communities are mapping and documenting land titles to protect villagers against government land grabs, megaprojects and extractive industries. Some 3.5 million hectares (8.6 million acres) of land have been mapped under the initiative, including reserved forests and wildlife sanctuaries.

The Indigenous Semai tribe of Malaysia’s Perak state also demonstrated the power of concerted local action. The tribe achieved a significant legal victory when a court ordered a hydroelectric dam project to cease operations and vacate the tribe’s ancestral land after it was ruled the developers, Perak Hydro Renewable Energy Corporation and Conso Hydro RE, had not obtained proper consent from the community.

Demarcation of customary land. The Karen Environmental and Social Action Network (KESAN), an environmental organization, initiated a land policy in 2012 and collaborated with the KNU to demarcate agricultural plots and community forests in Myanmar. Image courtesy of KESAN.

As the climate crisis continues to alter the landscape across Southeast Asia, the future remains uncertain for the region, which boasts vast ecological significance and the potential to address these issues. But the stakes are high; millions of people’s lives and livelihoods are inextricably tied to the region’s ecosystems, as is the survival a wide range of wildlife and plant species. Southeast Asia will be a region closely watched by conservationists in 2025 as both a source of hope and cause for concern.

This article was originally published on Mongabay under the Creative Commons BY NC ND licence. Read the original article.