In light of ongoing global threats posed by climate change, ASEAN aspires to be a regional organization capable of advancing environmental sustainability through Vision 2040 and its four-pillar ASEAN Community Strategic Plans. To realize this vision, it has made progress in involving non-state actors including NGOs and the business and academic communities, within its regional participatory framework. However, there are growing calls for ASEAN to further involve these stakeholders, given the institutional constraints that continue to limit meaningful participation. Addressing these gaps is essential if ASEAN wants to transition from a state-centric model to a truly “inclusive and sustainable” bloc of regional environmental governance.

The 2025 Malaysian chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) reintroduced the term “sustainability” into its official theme, “Inclusivity and Sustainability.” This is the first time that such language has been used since Thailand’s 2019 theme, “Advancing Partnership for Sustainability.” According to the Malaysian government, this thematic choice reflects its priorities as this year’s chairman, which include mitigating the impacts of climate change. This explicit priority is a long-overdue recognition of one of the region’s most pressing and complex predicaments. According to the 2021 ASEAN State of Climate Change, Southeast Asia remains highly vulnerable to climate-related impacts due to a wide range of factors such as widespread poverty in certain member states, heavy reliance on climate-sensitive sectors for livelihoods, extensive coastlines, and exposure to multiple natural hazards. 

Despite repeated calls for urgent action, ASEAN’s environmental agenda has often been delayed in real implementation. Most recently, Greenpeace Malaysia and Thailand both urged the Malaysian government, under the leadership of Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, to take the lead in championing a legally binding ASEAN framework for environmental rights. The organization stressed that environmental rights can no longer be treated as a supplemental issue in the region, which they argue that ASEAN’s sustainability rhetoric will remain largely symbolic without enforceable commitments. Thus, one might question that beyond this thematic branding, is ASEAN truly making substantive progress toward a more environmentally conscious and sustainable future?

Before evaluating this question, it is imperative to note ASEAN’s environmental governance model. The organisation’s model is structured on the ASEAN Way, which is a decision-making approach rooted in consensus-building, mutual respect, and a strict norm of non-interference in member states’ domestic affairs. ASEAN operates this framework through the regular gathering of three key environmental forums: the ASEAN Senior Officials on the Environment Meeting (ASOEN), the ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on the Environment (AMME), and the Conference of the Parties to the ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution (COP-AATHP). These annual meetings standardizes features of the organization’s governance calendar, regardless of which member state holds the chairmanship.

However, these meetings should not be mistaken for tangible progress. For years, ASEAN has hosted countless dialogues and summits on environmental issues, but the region continues to suffer from persistent climate inaction. If these meetings had led to tangible shifts in climate governance action, this repetition might be justified. Unfortunately, it has not been the case. As climate challenges escalate, ASEAN remains mired in bureaucratic inertia. Even former Malaysian Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah has candidly described ASEAN as “an elitist organization,” due to its rigid, government-centric processes. Therefore, this institutional design risks producing a cycle of performative engagement with little substantive innovation or implementation. This raises a critical question: has ASEAN truly leveraged its regional role to advance effective climate action, or does it remain trapped in a state-centric model that prioritizes form over function? Has ASEAN moved beyond symbolic meetings and governmental exclusivity to embrace more inclusive, people-oriented participatory efforts in shaping the region’s environmental policies?

In this regard, it seems that ASEAN has indeed taken meaningful steps toward advancing sustainability, particularly through its growing engagement with non-state actors, which lack formal governmental authority. These include individuals, civil society organizations, academic institutions, and the private sector. Slowly realising that environmental governance extends beyond state actors alone, ASEAN has begun to open space for these stakeholders to participate in consultations, policy dialogues, and regional forums.

One of the most prominent examples of non-state actor involvement in ASEAN’s environmental policymaking lies in its gradual engagement with local and transnational non-governmental organizations (NGOs), which historically has been limited and largely supplemental. Initially, the organisation failed to recognise the significance of NGOs in regional engagement. It was only until the 2005 ASEAN Summit that NGOs received their first formal acknowledgement within ASEAN’s environmental governance framework, with more concrete institutional recognition occurring through the establishment of the first Civil Society Organization (CSO) Forum on the Environment in 2007. Since then, ASEAN’s approach to NGOs has been cautious, highly structured, and selective. Rather than positioning NGOs as equal partners in co-developing environmental policy, their role has largely been confined to only supporting ASEAN-led initiatives within predefined parameters, instead of challenging, redefining, or co-creating new ones.

Nonetheless, ASEAN has occasionally responded to these NGO pressures. In the past, advocacy efforts from organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) have led to increased border security to combat transboundary wildlife trafficking in the region. NGO influence has also extended into transboundary environmental governance, particularly through private sustainability standards. The Palm Oil Innovation Group (POIG), founded in 2013, was developed in partnership with leading NGOs as well as with progressive palm oil producers to reform the methods of palm oil certification in Southeast Asia to be more environmentally responsible. Notably, Greenpeace, despite being historically critical of self-regulation in the palm oil industry, was one of the founding members of this organization.

Furthermore, the business community also engages with ASEAN on regional environmental issues, where their primary way to engage is through economic trade and regulatory framework. Particularly, ASEAN’s way to transboundary environmental cooperation has primarily centred around fostering cross-border economic partnerships aligned with green economic growth objectives. Instead of politicizing environmental governance, ASEAN adopted a market-based, pragmatic strategy to address environmental challenges. A notable example is the 2014 Indonesian Transboundary Haze Pollution, which prompted multinational palm oil traders operating in Indonesia to adopt stricter sustainability standards for emissions and land use, contributing to the development of more rigorous industry practices, which essentially catalysed the implementation of Singapore’s 2014 Transboundary Haze Pollution Act. 

Finally, ASEAN acknowledges the important role of academia in advancing knowledge-based policy development and has, at times, included academics and academic institutions in decision-making processes. This is particularly evident in the forestry sector, where ASEAN has promoted knowledge exchange and policy coordination through the establishment of the ASEAN Regional Knowledge Networks for forest law enforcement and governance, engaging academics and experts to provide technical input and enhance policy coherence. Additionally, in-house research conducted within the civil society sector has supported advocacy strategies, strengthening CSO engagement with ASEAN officials. ASEAN has also embraced ecocriticism, that is, the study of representations of the relationship between human development and the non-human world in literature, as a regionally rooted, scholarly approach to humanity’s ecological impact. In response to this, the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment in ASEAN (ASLE-ASEAN) was established in 2016 to promote environmentally focused and place-based academic and creative work across the region. 

Higher education institutions have also played an increasingly important role in environmental advocacy and public capacity building across ASEAN through institutional representation. Universities within ASEAN have contributed to policy-relevant research and innovation through regional-based platforms such as the ASEAN University Network – University Social Responsibility and Sustainability (AUN USR&S) and the AUN Thematic Network on Ecological Education and Culture. These initiatives, which involve over 20 universities, support regional environmental sustainability and ecological efforts through academic research, innovation, and capacity-building programs. As a result, universities such as the National University of Singapore (NUS), Malaysia’s University of Malaya (UM), Vietnam’s National University of Hanoi, and the National University of Ho Chi Minh City have each launched targeted environmental education campaigns and public lecture series to promote community engagement in sustainable development within their national contexts. 

Despite ASEAN’s progressive efforts to foster a more inclusive approach to environmental policymaking, there are, unfortunately, persistent limitations of participatory mechanisms available to non-state actors that remain constrained by structural and political barriers. Environmental NGOs were especially restricted from participating in high-level decision-making processes in ASEAN’s regional policymaking avenues, largely due to the overarching influence of state control and governance surveillance. A striking example is the exclusion of Thai civil society and NGO representatives from the ASEAN-supported Mekong River Commission’s consultation on the transboundary impacts of the Luang Prabang dam project. These groups were denied substantive participation, which created an environment where consultation outcomes were ultimately communicated solely by government officials, which has undermined the legitimacy of the process. Moreover, environmental activists and civil society organizations in democratically repressed countries such as Cambodia and Indonesia continue to face harassment, intimidation, and, in some cases, arrest or charges of treason. Their grassroots advocacy efforts are often framed by political regimes as a threat to national development or social cohesion. And in response, these establishments reinforce a climate of fear that further erodes the potential for inclusive and rights-based environmental governance in the region.

Another example of non-state actors being sidelined is the Indigenous people, where environmental degradation driven by economic development has frequently resulted in their displacement and resettlement, particularly in contexts marked by civil conflict and economic marginalization. Despite the gravity of these impacts, ASEAN has remained largely silent on such issues within its institutional and international decision-making frameworks. Even in its most recent efforts to develop a regional policy instrument on environmental rights, ASEAN has been reluctant to explicitly recognize Indigenous peoples and their environmental rights. This omission by ASEAN seems to show that the organization has overlooked its vital role as a steward of the land and disregards the significance of indigenous peoples’ traditional ecological knowledge in advancing sustainable environmental governance.

ASEAN should continue to strengthen its transboundary environmental governance, where it needs to move beyond state-centric processes and meaningfully include non-state actors in decision-making. Their involvement is essential to warrant a more grounded and responsive way to environmental policymaking, which reflects the realities on the ground. Without such inclusive engagement, ASEAN’s environmental policymaking risks remaining top-down, disconnected, and limited in its effectiveness. Therefore, it is both crucial and hopeful that Malaysia, having chosen “Inclusivity and Sustainability” as the theme of its chairmanship this year, remains in harmony with the spirit of its message, ensuring that the “Inclusivity” of non-state actors becomes an integral part of the composition of the participatory mechanism in environmental issues. Only then can the “Sustainability” of ASEAN’s environmental efforts resonate beyond the present moment and endure as part of the region’s long-term vision for years to come.

Image credits: Flickr / Prachatai

Muhammad Hilmie Jalong
Hilmie, born and raised in Malaysia, is a graduate of the University of Toronto (UofT), where he studied Statistics, Mathematics, and Political Science. His research focuses on Southeast Asian identity, electoral politics and international relations. He was a Methods Lab Peer Tutor at the UofT Department of Political Science. Passionate about data-driven insights, he explores the intersection of politics and statistical analysis, particularly in Southeast Asia’s evolving political landscape and its relations with global superpowers.