Asia’s climate challenge is being felt in ways that are deeply human: unsafe air, extreme heat, fragile housing, disrupted livelihoods, and growing pressure on health systems. From heat stress among outdoor workers to flood-prone homes and rising cases of infectious and respiratory disease, climate risks are increasingly shaping daily life across the region.
Despite the scale and urgency of these impacts, health-focused adaptation is severely underfunded. In a report published by AVPN, in partnership with Prudence Foundation, of the estimated US$1.1 trillion needed annually for climate mitigation and adaptation in Asia, only around 30 per cent is currently mobilised, and between 2018 and 2019, just 8 per cent of Asia’s climate finance was allocated to adaptation, with health receiving only a fraction of that.
The statistics indicate that we need to channel capital more effectively, to safeguard future generations. While providing direct assistance after disasters strike remains key, equally important is a long-term reallocation of capital towards adaptation and resilience solutions that can help communities withstand, recover from, and even thrive in the face of climate stressors.
Innovation exists — but capital does not follow
Across Asia, early-stage solutions addressing health impacts of climate change are emerging, underscoring how climate issues are becoming top of mind for the current generation. These early-stage solutions converge around opportunities that illustrate the diversity of vulnerabilities. Yet early-stage ventures operating in the US$1 -10 million range remain underserved.
The reason is structural. Climate ventures are often directed towards upstream infrastructure and public goods, like renewable energy. Adaptation-linked health interventions often struggle to attract capital due to perceived complexity, softer return profiles and lack of investability signals.
As a result, the financing gap widens where resilience building, particularly for vulnerable communities, is most needed.
Start-ups building resilience on the ground
Despite these barriers, a growing cohort of start-ups across the region is demonstrating what resilience in practice could look like.
In Indonesia, startups like Nazava address the critical challenge of access to safe drinking water, which affects 4.4 billion people globally.
By providing WHO-tested, gravity-based water filters, Nazava eliminates the need for boiling water, buying plastic bottles, or relying on electricity.
The solution particularly reduces the burden on women and children, who often spend significant time and resources collecting fuel, purifying water, and treating water-borne illnesses. To date, Nazava has improved access to clean water for over one million people across more than 50 countries. The company is a certified B Corp and aligns with the Gold Standard for the Global Goals, contributing directly to Sustainable Development Goals 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 13, and 15.
Berikan Protein strengthens circular and inclusive food systems by turning low-value fish into Fish Protein Hydrolysate (FPH), a highly bioavailable protein powder. This approach reduces fish waste, eases environmental pressures, and boosts income for small-scale fishermen.
By transforming FPH into affordable, locally sourced nutritious foods, the enterprise improves access to protein while reinforcing community-based food systems. Berikan Protein is also developing Protein Meter, a data-driven tool that tracks nutritional adequacy and informs evidence-based interventions, demonstrating how sustainable innovation can tackle malnutrition while building resilient, scalable food systems.
There are other startups like them in the market. Early-stage ventures across Asia are working on heat-stress mitigation, health-focused early-warning systems, climate-linked financial protection for vulnerable workers, and adaptive infrastructure in flood- and heat-exposed regions. Together, they point to a growing pipeline of solutions that are locally grounded, scalable, sustainable and investable, if the right capital structures and business models are in place.
Partnerships as enabler
Today, philanthropic actors play an instrumental role in early-stage ecosystem building, helping to create the enabling conditions for scale and sustainability.
This includes investing in research and advocacy to strengthen the evidence base, supporting the incubation and validation of early-stage solutions, supporting capacity building or technical assistance, developing shared tools and benchmarks that improve investment readiness, and convening partnerships across finance, innovation, public health and implementation. Ultimately, the objective is to support these innovative solutions to be integrated into a market mechanism that delivers scalable as well as sustainable social impacts.
However, philanthropic actors cannot do this alone. Progress depends on partnerships that unite public, private and philanthropic sectors as well as research and advocacy groups.
Collaborations with organisations such as the World Health Organization, the Red Cross and Red Crescent Climate Centre, AVPN and climate-health research platforms also play a critical role in shifting the narrative from reactive response to anticipatory action. Much of this work is not immediately visible, but it is essential in reducing uncertainty and aligning incentives across fragmented systems.
An opportunity hiding in plain sight
Asia already has what it needs to lead on climate-health resilience: innovation, urgency, and locally grounded solutions. What remains missing is capital that knows how to move first.
Catalytic capital, often enabled by impact investors and philanthropic players, bridges the gap between ideas and scale. It converts uncertainty into evidence, pilots into pipelines, and fragmented efforts into investable markets.
Climate and health resilience is not simply a moral imperative. It is one of Asia’s most under-recognised strategic investment opportunities. The challenge is no longer the absence of solutions, but whether policies, institutions, capital and partnerships are aligned to bring them to scale.
Nicole Ngeow is the Executive Director of Prudence Foundation, the philanthropy and community investment arm of Prudential plc. Nicole joined the Foundation since 2015, and has been instrumental in the strategy development and implementation of programmes under the thematic areas of Financial Literacy and Inclusion, and Climate & Health Resilience across Asia and Africa.
