Asia and the Pacific is a dynamic yet vulnerable region where rapid development intersects with escalating environmental pressures. It is also a region where the triple planetary crisis—climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution—threatens to undermine a sustainable future for over 60% of the world’s population. One major reason for this is that the region’s policymakers tend to address these crises with isolated rather than integrated solutions. As a result, many countries in the Asia-Pacific region are missing out on opportunities to leverage various cross-issue synergies that can save money and time by working across multiple dimensions of sustainability.

This session will therefore explore how synergistic approaches that integrate responses to the triple planetary crisis can make Asia-Pacific more sustainable and secure. As a basis for discussion, it will present key points from the Asia-Pacific Synergy Report authors’ meeting, to be held in early July 2025, jointly coordinated by IGES, UNESCAP, UNEP, ADB and the Ministry of the Environment, Japan. These insights will demonstrate the potential of synergies to deliver solutions that are not only good for the environment but also meet other objectives, including regional security. Through these discussions, this session aims to contribute from a regional perspective on where concepts such as synergy and just transition will fit within the sustainable development agenda beyond 2030.