UN report says $800bn climate fund shortfall in Asia-Pacific calls for synergistic action

Instead of viewing cooling as only a demand-side energy issue, initiatives supported by India’s Cooling Action Plan position access to safe and efficient cooling as a public health priority linked to climate mitigation and adaptation goals, a report by a United Nations body said on Tuesday (30 June 2026).

A message with a title “Asia-Pacific Synergies Report: Progress on Synergistic Solutions to the Triple Planetary Crisis and the SDGs” reported that mainstreaming cooling into health and safety has strengthened political support and facilitated coordination across the energy, urban, labor and social sectors.

“Conventional air conditioning expansion risks locking in higher emissions, worsening air pollution and deepening energy poverty if not managed carefully,” the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) report said.

It noted that while policies to address these issues are often national in scope, implementation has progressed primarily through programs and pilot initiatives in several states and urban regions, reflecting the diversity of climate risks, electrical systems, and cooling demand across the country.

“In response to rising temperature and extreme heat, India has advanced sustainable cooling initiatives, including programs implemented through Energy Efficiency Services Limited and supported by the India Cooling Action Plan (ICAP), with implementation taking place through programs and pilot initiatives in several states and cities,” the report said.

Citing measures such as the promotion of high-efficiency cooling equipment, improving the energy performance of buildings and demand-side management approaches that reduce peak electrical loads during extreme heat, the report says these initiatives are supported by policies that align thermal risk management, energy planning and climate strategies.

It also mentioned that initiatives integrate health goals into energy efficiency, cooling technology deployment and system planning.

The report also emphasized the conservation of biodiversity through nature-positive pathways and emphasized that achieving this goal in the Asia-Pacific region requires an enabling environment capable of supporting integrated, systemic and transformative action.

“Synergistic approaches are seen as potentially transformative responses to interrelated biodiversity and other environmental challenges. Their potential reflects the fact that biodiversity is not an isolated environmental problem, but the foundation of resilient and inclusive development itself,” the report states.

“This recognition is reinforced by growing evidence that healthy ecosystems are critical to achieving a wide range of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): climate resilience, food security, water supply and human health,” he added.

The report pointed out that the nexus approach required considerable thought to work and highlighted the Satoyama initiative to restore sacred groves in South India’s Kalrayan Hills, implemented by the Vellore Institute of Technology with the support of the Satoyama Development Mechanism Fund.

The Satoyama Initiative is a global effort to realize a “society in harmony with nature” through the promotion of socio-ecological productive landscapes and seashores (SEPLS) where biodiversity conservation and human livelihoods are linked.

The initiative is based on the use of model landscapes traditionally formed through the synergistic practice of sustainable agriculture, forestry and fishing, especially in rural communities.

The report also cited the example of the National Green India Mission, one of the eight critical missions under India’s National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) – which integrates forest restoration into rural development, energy and water programmes.

But the report acknowledged that developing economies in the Asia-Pacific region face a climate finance gap of around $800 billion a year.

She mentioned that closing this gap requires financing structured to deliver co-benefits across climate, biodiversity and pollution goals, and coordinated efforts to make fragmented financial flows more coherent.

“Financially motivated approaches rely on the structure of the financial mechanism itself, through its incentives or regulatory requirements, to actively generate co-benefits.

“In contrast, finance-enabling approaches depend on well-designed projects to deliver these benefits, with finance playing a supportive rather than a driving role,” says one of the report’s key messages.

She added that synergistic financing can increase transaction costs, lengthen preparation times and create coordination problems, but noted that these trade-offs can be addressed through regulatory reforms, cost reductions and pay-for-performance structures that align incentives.

“Well-designed public, private and mixed financing mechanisms can generate synergistic outcomes. However, these instruments often remain underutilized due to fragmented mandates, limited institutional capacity, and weak market incentives for integrated investment,” the report said.

Citing examples from Fiji, India, Indonesia and Vietnam, the report highlighted that synergistic financing is feasible if trade-offs are understood and managed.

She said experiences from these countries show that there are sources of investable, synergistic projects and that the enabling environment, voluntary frameworks and financial ecosystems need to be strengthened for the private sector to invest in this pipeline.

“Case studies show that challenges to synergistic funding can be managed with greater attention to regulatory clarity, cost reduction, pay-for-performance structures that align incentives, and existing partnerships that remove coordination constraints,” the report says.

He also mentioned India’s Super-Efficient Energy Equipment Program (SEEP) to highlight how pay-for-performance financing can catalyze multi-dimensional synergies, and the Tamil Nadu Biodiversity Conservation Project, which shows how Official Development Assistance (ODA) funding can enable integrated conservation and livelihood models through adaptive design and multi-stakeholder coordination.

In its recommendation to national governments, the report highlighted the need to operationalize inter-ministerial coordination through secretariats empowered to review public investments with respect to climate, biodiversity and pollution criteria and to design integrated financial systems and regulatory frameworks for co-benefits planning.

He also called for the reallocation of subsidies that are not aligned with climate goals towards environmental investments with multiple benefits and the formulation of comprehensive national strategies that quantify overall funding requirements across environmental areas while explicitly identifying synergies and trade-offs.