Igniting capital, powering progress

This exclusive breakfast briefing will examine the barriers preventing capital from reaching vulnerable communities and showcase practical solutions to close both the capacity and financing gaps. The session will feature the launch of new insights on the barriers to inclusive climate finance in Asia-Pacific, alongside two complementary solutions: strengthening the skills and capabilities of finance professionals through climate finance training, and mobilising investment through the Regional Adaptation Investment Facility (RAIF).

Registration for Unlocking capital for sustainability is at Level 3 UCFS Conference room – Lab 12, Nicoll 1.

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Delegates must register at the IMPACT WEEK counter before going to the Unlocking capital for sustainability Singapore registration area. Each delegate will have two badges: one for IMPACT WEEK and one for Unlocking capital for sustainability Singapore.

Asia Pacific generates around 60% of global GDP, yet disaster- and climate-related losses are rising faster than the capital flowing to prevent them, with adaptation and resilience still the most underfunded pillar of climate finance. What will it take to mobilise private and blended capital at the scale and speed needed to protect the region’s economies, infrastructure and communities?

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This opening plenary convenes leaders from finance, insurance and development institutions to unpack how adaptation can be structured as a bankable asset class, with clear value, risk reduction and return profiles. The discussion will explore the role of blended finance and risk-sharing instruments in de-risking early investment, and how development banks and institutional investors can better align incentives around resilient infrastructure.

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Water security will be used as a sharp case study, spotlighting investment models for resilient water systems – from flood protection and storage to smarter distribution and reuse – and what it takes to turn these resilience needs into scalable, investable opportunities across Asia Pacific.

Nature loss is rapidly emerging as a material financial risk, yet capital markets and risk frameworks are still largely calibrated to carbon alone. Nature-dependent sectors across Southeast Asia now face mounting pressure on forests, coastlines and water systems, exposing banks and investors to physical, transition and liability risks that are not yet fully priced in. At the same time, expectations are rising – from TNFD adoption to evolving green and nature taxonomies – faster than the pipeline of investable, bankable nature-positive projects.

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This plenary convenes regional banks, institutional investors and nature-finance innovators to discuss practical steps to integrate biodiversity and ecosystem risk into credit, underwriting and portfolio decisions, and how that can reshape capital allocation across high-impact sectors. What do financial institutions actually need – in data, instruments and policy signals – to move nature from a disclosure and reporting obligation to a core investment thesis?  

Climate-health impacts are often framed as a future risk, but for many communities and businesses they are already a present-day governance failure. Rising heat, extreme weather, poor air quality, and disease exposure are placing growing pressure on workers, residents, infrastructure, and local economies, yet the question remains: who is actually responsible for acting? The motion explores how companies are responding – and whether governments are doing enough to set the rules, standards, and protections needed for meaningful resilience.

In an era defined by geopolitical uncertainty, market volatility and societal division, leadership is increasingly about creating clarity amid fragmentation. This board-focused discussion will explore how leaders can hold organisations together when external pressures are pulling them in different directions, from shifting stakeholder expectations and fractured supply chains to competing priorities across markets and teams.

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Thought leaders will examine what effective leadership looks like when consensus is harder to build and decisions carry wider strategic consequences and what leadership capabilities are needed to sustain performance, credibility and direction in an increasingly divided world.

Across the world, foundations are being rewritten. Central banks in over 130 countries are advancing digital currencies that could redefine how value moves. New cross-border systems are emerging beyond legacy rails, while markets are reshaping how value is stored and priced. At the same time, deployment is being reinvented. Fintech platforms and digital banks are reaching millions long excluded from formal finance, using new models of risk, scale, and capital. Taken together, this is a once-in-a-generation redesign of the monetary system.

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But none of it is inherently aligned with impact. The same systems can enable inclusion or extraction, regeneration or speculation. The imperative now is to ensure the impact investing community understands what is being built around it, recognises where its voice belongs in those design conversations, and organises itself into a coherent enough body that—over the decade—that voice can be present, credible, and weighty when the architectural choices are being made. Three honest questions: what happened to money as a store of value; who is deciding what replaces it; and who has standing to sit in those design rooms?

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Note: This session will take place at Forum 1. View the full session details on the IMPACT WEEK Singapore 2026 programme.

Asia Pacific generates 60 per cent of global GDP, yet the region is contending with what the UN has called a "triple crisis" — climate impacts, mounting debt and biodiversity loss — just as geopolitical tensions and shifting trade alignments fracture the multilateral consensus that once underpinned economic cooperation. The pressure on Asian economies to chart their own course toward resilient, low-carbon growth has never been greater.

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In this fireside chat, Guest-of-honour Jeffrey Siow, Minister for Transport, Second Minister for Finance for Singapore who oversees Singapore's air, land and sea transport as well as its fiscal and economic strategy, joins Jessica Cheam to discuss what credible leadership on the transition looks like when global cooperation can no longer be assumed.  

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The conversation will explore what it takes for Asia to move from ambition to implementation, and what role Asian nations like Singapore can play in holding the transition together when the old playbook no longer applies.

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‍Note: This session will take place at Forum 1.

The Liveability Challenge celebrates a decade of climate tech innovation in Asia with its 10th edition. Join us for the launch of TLC to discover this year’s new themes, learn more about the  funding opportunities available, and connect with leading investors from across the region.

62 startups backed and about S$18 million in catalytic funding deployed. A decade on, The Liveability Challenge has moved technologies across water security, alternative protein, hydrogen storage and passive cooling from lab to market.  

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As TLC marks 10 years as Asia’s leading climate tech innovation platform, the critical question has evolved to what it will take to scale solutions in a funding environment that has cooled sharply amid global geopolitical and economic headwinds, where policy frameworks often lag the technology, and where the capital required to de-risk large infrastructure bets rarely resembles early-stage venture money.  

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This TLC plenary convenes capital, policy and enterprise leaders to interrogate the gap between pilot and scale. Using a decade of TLC case studies as a shared reference point, the session will explore what it takes to move beyond the ‘funding winter’ to focus on what de-risks a climate technology for growth capital, which blended finance structures are proving effective in practice, and what founders who have navigated the pilot-to-scale transition wish they had known earlier.