Climate Policy, Governance, and Action Across Asia

50 Universities. 50 Institutes. One Connected Asian Platform.

The Asian Institutes for Climate Policy (AICP) is a distributed network of university-based institutes working with governments, communities, civil society, and industry to accelerate climate-responsive policy and institutional change across Asia.

Rather than building one centralized regional institute, AICP strengthens universities as locally embedded climate policy institutions—connected through a shared Asian platform for action-research, policy innovation, leadership development, and collective learning.

Universities as Climate Governance Infrastructure

Asia’s climate challenges are regional, but their impacts are deeply local.

Heat, flooding, water insecurity, energy transition, food-system disruption, health risks, displacement, and climate finance play out differently across cities, provinces, watersheds, coastlines, and communities.

Universities are uniquely positioned to connect knowledge with these real-world governance challenges.

AICP enables participating universities to become long-term partners of government and society in understanding climate risks, testing policy responses, strengthening institutions, and developing the next generation of climate leaders.

The 50-University Platform

AICP will initially bring together 50 universities across Asia, each hosting an Asian Institute for Climate Policy.

Every institute operates with local autonomy while contributing to a common regional platform.

Institutes may develop particular strengths in:

Climate adaptation and resilience
Just energy transition
Climate finance
Climate and health
Food and water security
Urban resilience
Climate justice
Loss and damage
Nature and biodiversity
Climate diplomacy

Together, the institutes create a distributed portfolio of climate policy knowledge, capability, and experimentation across Asia.

From Research to Institutional Change

AICP is built around action-research.

Institutes work alongside policymakers, practitioners, communities, and other actors on real climate challenges—not simply studying them from a distance.

Climate Challenge → Collaborative Inquiry → Policy Experiment → Learning → Institutional Change

Success is measured not only by publications and research outputs, but by whether institutions become more capable of governing through climate change.

What the Institutes Do

Climate Policy Labs

Convene government, universities, communities, civil society, and industry around complex climate policy challenges.

Policy Action-Research

Generate knowledge by working on real-world climate governance problems and testing possible responses.

Climate Policy Fellowships

Develop public officials, practitioners, researchers, faculty, students, and emerging leaders working on live climate challenges.

Government Climate Capacity

Help ministries, local governments, and public institutions strengthen climate offices, climate bureaus, policies, financing mechanisms, and cross-agency coordination.

Asian Climate Policy Commons

Build a shared repository of cases, tools, datasets, institutional designs, policy prototypes, curricula, and lessons generated across the network.

50 Universities × 5 Climate Missions

Each founding institute will be encouraged to undertake five consequential climate policy missions relevant to its territory.

Together:

50 Institutes × 5 Missions = 250 Climate Policy Missions Across Asia

A mission might involve establishing a local climate office, designing a heat-health governance system, developing a climate finance mechanism, accelerating a just energy transition, strengthening watershed governance, creating climate-responsive social protection, improving urban flood resilience, or building climate-adaptive food systems.

These missions become both the work and the curriculum of the network.

Local. National. Transnational.

AICP operates simultaneously across three interconnected levels.

Local and Subnational

Institutes work directly with cities, municipalities, provinces, communities, and ecosystems.

National

Institutes support ministries, national agencies, policy processes, and cross-sector climate initiatives.

Asian and Transnational

Institutes collaborate across borders, compare policy experiments, undertake joint research, develop regional initiatives, and contribute to Asian and global climate policy processes.

Common Architecture. Local Autonomy.

AICP is not a franchise.

Each university develops an institute responsive to its geography, institutions, expertise, and climate challenges.

What connects the network is a shared commitment to:

Action-research • Policy experimentation • Institutional innovation • Climate leadership • Cross-sector collaboration • Shared learning

A university in Nepal might specialize in mountain resilience and hydropower governance.

A Philippine institute might focus on local climate governance and coastal resilience.

An Indonesian institute might work on peatlands and energy transition.

An Indian institute might specialize in extreme heat, cities, and climate finance.

The result is not 50 identical institutes, but 50 complementary centers of climate policy capability connected across Asia.

An Asian Climate Policy Commons

Knowledge generated by one institute should become useful to many others.

AICP will build a shared policy commons containing:

Climate policy cases
Institutional designs
Policy prototypes
Teaching materials
AI-enabled policy tools
Climate datasets
Fellowship curricula
Government capacity-building tools
Lessons from policy experiments

The network makes climate policy knowledge increasingly reusable, adaptable, and accessible across Asia.

Building the Institutions Climate Change Requires

Many climate challenges cannot be addressed through projects alone.

They require institutions capable of continuously learning, coordinating, adapting, and acting.

AICP institutes will therefore work with governments to strengthen or incubate:

Climate bureaus
Climate policy offices
Interagency mechanisms
Local climate governance systems
Climate finance platforms
Regional cooperation mechanisms
Public-private-community partnerships

The objective is not simply more climate projects.

It is stronger institutions for a climate-changed world.

Our Ambition

AICP begins with 50 founding universities.

Over time, the platform aims to connect 200+ university-based institutes across Asia, creating a distributed infrastructure for climate policy learning, experimentation, leadership, and institutional innovation.

Our long-term vision:

Universities across Asia becoming permanent partners in governing through climate change.

Join the Founding Network

We invite universities, governments, development partners, foundations, climate organizations, and practitioners to help build the first generation of Asian Institutes for Climate Policy.

Host an Institute.
Partner on a Climate Mission.
Support a Fellowship.
Join the Asian Climate Policy Commons.

Asian Institutes for Climate Policy

Locally embedded. Nationally relevant. Transnationally connected.