Association of Southeast Asian Nations

• By 2050, more than half the population of most ASEAN Member States (AMS) will live in cities, and by 2035 the ASEAN region will have at least five mega-cities. • Cities are a laboratory of local and global challenges and solutions, and ASEAN cities are frequently frontrunners in developing sustainable (model) cities, with multiple good practices...

• Climate change is already causing serious negative impacts in the region. In the future, extreme weather and sea level rise will cause mounting economic costs in terms of damage to health, infrastructure, and food security. • ASEAN Member States (AMS) have a variety of policies and responses to climate change adaptation and disaster risk...

• The ASEAN region is one of the most biodiverse in the world on land, in freshwater and in the ocean. • Drivers that underlie pressures on biodiversity in AMS include economic incentives that promote consumption and, hence, land-use change. These drivers are challenges to achieving SDGs 14 and 15 on conserving marine and terrestrial biodiversity...

▪ Remarkable progress has been made to improve access to safe and clean drinking water over the last 20 years; however, water degradation caused by poor sanitation and hygiene services, low water-use efficiency for agriculture, and lack of appropriate domestic wastewater treatment systems are still common challenges observed in many ASEAN Member...

• Except for land-linked Lao PDR, the remaining ASEAN Member States (AMS) are bordered by seas. Those seas, however, are under increasing direct and indirect pressure from human interference, including the preference for many forms of development in the region’s coastal zones and islands. • Aquaculture is rapidly replacing overexploited capture...

• As ASEAN increasingly transitions away from its agrarian traditions and becomes a core part of the global supply chain, improved environmental management of chemicals and waste is imperative. • Manufacturing is now a major contributor to AMS' gross domestic product (GDP) and exports but too many outdated factories in some developing ASEAN...

• The SDGs encourage countries to develop synergies between the environment and the social and economic dimensions of sustainable development. This could help gain more support for environmental measures by the public as well as a broader range of policymakers. • AMS have extensively engaged with the SDG process, developing data and indicators and...

• Since its inception, ASEAN has had a vision of an integrated, sustainable, harmonious, peaceful, and productive region, with its “One Vision, One Identity, One Community”. • The three complementary communities, APSC, AEC, and ASCC, all include aspects of the future environmental conditions and quality of life desired for all ASEAN people, aligned...

• In ASEAN’s organizational structure, environmental cooperation is under the ASCC. • Environmental cooperation within ASEAN is overseen by AMME, managed by ASOEN, and implemented through seven Working Groups under the ASOEN, supported by the ASEAN Secretariat. • ASEAN conducts international cooperation on the environment at all levels, from the...

● Many environmental responses tackle the impacts that appear at the end of a long chain of logic, such as premature deaths from air pollution, but they rarely address the underlying “drivers” of change. ● In the ASEAN region, these drivers include economic strategies that are geared towards creating an ASEAN economic community, continued...