The Regional Circulating and Ecological Sphere (Regional-CES) is a guiding concept for environmental policies to support the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in urban and rural communities with maximum utilisation of local strengths and resources. To promote the Regional-CES concept as a useful guiding principle, a scoping project was designed to engage key stakeholders in selected Southeast Asian countries, namely, the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia, by organising workshops in these countries. These workshops consisted of sessions to explain the Regional-CES concept, discuss and identify opportunities for applying Regional-CES based on each country’s context, and share practices that may have been conducted under similar frameworks or concepts. Common obstacles include limited scientific understanding, ignorance of local needs and reality in the top-down decision-making process, and limited capacity of local agencies and society. Participants acknowledged the potential of the Regional-CES approach to advance transformative actions towards low-carbon society, resource circulation, and living in harmony with nature at regional, national and local levels, and the importance of aligning the Regional-CES concept to specific local contexts, such as local needs, policy relevance and priorities that could address social, economic and environmental challenges.

Over the past few decades, Scenario analysis emerged as a useful tool for environmental decision-making amidst multiple uncertainties. Using the influential drivers of change, Scenarios portray the range of plausible alternative futures useful for quantifying the synergies and trade-offs of vital ecosystem services across multiple development trajectories. In this research, we demonstrate two case examples of the application of Scenarios in quantifying current and future mangrove ecosystem services. The case studies are selected from two representative sites: Tamsui River Estuary in Taiwan and Bhitarkanika mangroves in Odisha, India. Using the combination of Land Change Modeller (LCM) and InVEST ecosystem services simulation Tool, the research demonstrates the application and use of spatially explicit Scenarios for mangroves’ current and future conservation. As such, the case studies identify an ameliorative way of future planning, particularly with respect to the eco-sensitive development of coastal regions and small islands.

Arsenic contamination in the Mekong River is a well-known environmental issue yet to be resolved due to its transboundary nature which further limits its access and data collection. Other than that, the key mechanisms that controlling the arsenic release in Mekong sub-region groundwater was heterogeneously distributed and can be varied from region to region. The main purpose of this project is to identify the regional arsenic contamination levels in the hope of helping the government integrate regional groundwater arsenic risk reduction policy in their near future planning. Sampling was conducted during May and August 2022 in Cambodia and Laos, respectively. The findings revealed that the topography of certain areas in Cambodia has exposed significantly high concentrations of arsenic in groundwater compared to those in Laos. About 33% of the sampling sites in Cambodia had shown a high arsenic contamination (> 10 µg/L, WHO guideline) with its concentration ranging from 47.7 ± 0.8 to 696.9 ± 5.6 ppb. The physicochemical properties revealed that the arsenic controlling mechanisms were totally different between both study area. More regional and site-specific arsenic contamination research related to climate change and arsenic hydrology at regional levels should be carried out to ensure the water safety plan in specific regions. Further, we believe that the findings of this study will be beneficial to policy and regional water safety plans for the Mekong River, especially in Cambodia.

In South Asia, agriculture is pivotal for food and nutritional security and the livelihood of more than 50% of the population. Food production and nutritional security pressures intensify as urbanisation decreases the agricultural land area amid population growth. Climate change complicates this scenario by introducing elevated temperatures, extreme climatic events, surging sea levels, and increased soil salinity. Identifying climate-resilient innovative technologies for farmer adoption becomes imperative to counter these adversities. An integrated approach to climate-smart agriculture, encompassing capacity building through practical training on innovative mitigation strategies, is needed. This study unites experts from Australia, India, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan in an Asia-Pacific Network project, fostering mutual learning and farmer training in climate-smart practices. Insights from workshops conducted at Amity University in February 2020 and June 2022, combined with country-specific technological advances in the past 15 years gleaned from the literature, revealed key technologies to combat climate change (e.g., zero tillage, raised bed planting, direct-seeded rice, crop residue management, crop diversification, site-specific nutrient management, laser levelling, micro-irrigation, seed/fodder banks, and ICT-based weather advisories). Widespread implementation of these technologies and practices will empower farmers to navigate climate change challenges, fostering resilience and sustainability.

While nations have made commitments to address climate change, scholars estimate that even if these commitments are met, there remains an emissions gap between where we are and where we want to be to keep the globe under 1.5°C. Cities around the world are working to reduce this gap. Asian cities are large greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters and will be so over the next few decades. It is therefore urgent to identify ways in which the region’s cities can become more efficient and less polluting. This study is an APN research project that examines the GHG emissions at the sub-city level across 5 Asian cities (Tokyo, Beijing, Taipei, Seoul and Bangkok) as well as in New York City. The attempt is to identify potential strategies for low-carbon pathways. The research demonstrates that, in most cases, national and urban emissions are increasing, although the APN research teams identified stable emissions over the past few years in Beijing and Tokyo. However, the emissions profiles are different. Therefore, reducing emissions will require different strategies across the region’s cities. The study identifies some general policy priorities for cities based on the results of case studies.

Three Resilient Food Systems training workshops were delivered in Bogor, Indonesia, Suva, Fiji, and Port Vila, Vanuatu. The workshops provided young and early-career professionals with the latest international thinking on food systems and resilience. The workshop teaching material was based on the IFSTAL (Interdisciplinary Food System Teaching and Learning; www.ifstal.ac.uk) programme initially developed in the United Kingdom. The intensive six-day workshop programme integrates learning across three connected themes: food systems and resilience concepts, soft system methodology, and personal skills and development. Each workshop is locally contextualised with field trips, local inspirational guest speakers, and local real-world food system case studies. Throughout the duration of the workshop, participants apply new concepts and methodologies to their case studies, thereby enhancing their understanding and learning. Participant evaluation of the workshops was overwhelmingly positive, and pleasingly, participants reported positive learning outcomes across all three learning themes. These workshops represent just the initial step in a necessarily long and sustained effort to establish a community of food system professionals across Indonesia and Pacific Island states.

Weather and climate extremes have enormous impacts on society, and are becoming more severe and frequent as the world warms. Most developing countries in the Asia-Pacific region are highly vulnerable to risks associated with heatwaves and cold spells, droughts and floods, tropical cyclones, wildfires, and other extremes. To support regional and international cooperation for research on weather and climate extremes in the Asia-Pacific region, the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) hosted an online workshop on Extremes in Climate Prediction Ensembles (ExCPEns) from 25 to 28 October 2021 with the support of Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research (APN). The workshop aimed to advance the rapidly emerging science of exploiting subseasonal, seasonal, annual to decadal and long-term prediction ensembles to improve the prediction and understanding of weather and climate extreme events. An Early Career Scientist (ECS) event followed the ExCPEns workshop and consisted of a discussion and networking forum for ECS from APN member developing countries, along with a series of ECS training lectures and discussion sessions. Through the workshop and discussions among stakeholders, important scientific results on prediction and future changes in weather and climate extremes were communicated. Moreover, new research topics spanning these different time scales were identified and prioritized.

Southeast Asia is one of the world’s regions most vulnerable to climate change impacts with low-lying land, more severe floods and droughts, larger populations, higher dependency on agriculture for the economic sector, and low resilience of communities. Therefore, a study on how future climate change will affect this region has been conducted, and the results are provided in this paper. Projected surface temperatures and total precipitation from the baseline period of 2013 up to 2100 for Southeast Asia were investigated using the Global Climate Model (GCM) and the Weather Research Forecast (WRF) v3.9.1.1 modelling systems under RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 future climate scenarios. The results showed that future temperatures were projected to increase under both climate scenarios RCP4.5 and RCP8.5; however, precipitation was projected to decrease. The temperature was projected to increase by 0.93C and 2.50C under RCP4.5 and 8.5. Meanwhile, precipitation greatly varied under the RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 climate scenarios in both monsoonal seasons. We conclude that the change in climate variables, particularly the temperature and precipitation, could potentially increase the vulnerability of this region.

The developing countries in Asia are going through rapid urbanization, and integrating health considerations in the early stage of urban planning is important for sustainable development. This project was aimed at capacity building of participants from developing countries in Asia to enhance their a

Vegetable safety is a public concern in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam—developing countries in Southeast Asia. Eliminating this concern requires insight into factors shaping it. Food risk perception might differ among countries due to the dissimilarities in culture, social, and economic conditions. However, an understanding on this difference is lacking in Southeast Asia. This paper is the first attempt to compare factors influencing risk perception of vegetables in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Principle component analysis and ordered logit regression were employed on a sample of 1,199 consumers from the three countries. We found trust and perception of hazards influenced risk perception across countries. Gender shaped risk perception in Laos and Vietnam. The importance of vegetables and risk information determined risk perception in Vietnam only, while hazard knowledge and homegrown vegetables were predictors of risk perception solely in Cambodia. Since Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam are inhomogeneous in risk perception, policy measures to address food risk perception should be tailored to each country.