By Mehmet Enes Beşer The atmosphere in the capitals of Southeast Asia is growing increasingly unmistakably fatigued when it comes to climate finance. All those repeated promises from the developed world to mobilize billions on the behalf of climate mitigation and adaptation in the Global South have come woefully short. From unpaid commitments under the Paris Agreement to sluggish disbursement ...
By Mehmet Enes Beşer There is a stunning paradox at the core of the Southeast Asian model of development, a paradox more desperate with each climate summit, energy crisis, and investment diversion. The ASEAN bloc has subscribed formally to world climate targets. Its member states have made Nationally Determined Contributions, committed net-zero emission goals (some as early as 2050), and ...
By Mehmet Enes Beşer As Southeast Asia races to keep pace with surging energy demand amidst a global decarbonization wave, one question looms over the region: how can the region deliver clean, cheap, and secure electricity at scale over a patchwork landscape marked by extremes? The answer, the object of protracted debate and yet to be attained, is in a ...
By Mehmet Enes Beşer The regional energy giant of Southeast Asia, Indonesia, is at the crossroads of its energy future. Its history of dependency on fossil fuels led by coal has driven economic development at the cost of environmental degradation and escalating greenhouse gas emissions. In answer to global climate imperatives, not to mention domestic energy needs, Indonesia is shifting ...
By Mehmet Enes Beşer As the world is speeding towards a catastrophic climate tipping point, the role of the emerging economies has shifted from the periphery to center stage of global climate negotiations. Within this transformation, the ASEAN region has become a test site and a war zone of what climate ambition is in the Global South. As economies grow, ...
By Mehmet Enes Beşer Climate change is no longer a danger to Southeast Asia that may occur—climate change is everyday reality that humans are having trouble adjusting to. From rising oceans that menace coastal towns to the intense weather patterns annihilating food systems and livelihoods, the region is leading the charge on the climate crisis. ASEAN policymakers have begun to ...
By Mehmet Enes Beşer As the planet hurtles towards ecological tipping points, the climate crisis has reached not just an environmental crisis, but a civilizational emergency. Record-breaking heatwaves, disappearing coastlines, crashing biodiversity, and the oceans devouring land with an increasingly accelerating ferocity. Somewhere, this is felt—and politically under-served—more than in Southeast Asia. The ASEAN countries, with over 650 million people, ...
By Mehmet Enes Beşer The green transformation in the car industry is no longer a vision of the future but a here-and-now necessity. Transport emissions account for almost a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, and the decarbonization of mobility is at the heart of both European and Asian climate policy. Rhetorical sustainability talk is now part of industrial ...
By Mehmet Enes Beşer As the European Union seeks leadership in a broken and more uncertain world, the nature of its engagement with China is becoming a key test case—not merely of its geopolitical maturity but of its strategic endurance in the long term. In an increasingly bloc politics-, systemic competition-, and technology-diverging international world, the EU and China must ...
By Mehmet Enes Beşer Risk of an imminent trade war between the European Union and China on electric vehicles (EVs) has increased to become arguably the most pernicious flashpoint on today’s economic landscape. This is less about gaining access to markets or marginal tariff levels—but the very conceptualization of international cooperation on clean technology, climate guardianship, and economic stability. As ...