The Liveability Challenge (TLC), a global sustainability innovation competition that provides funding and support to help promising solutions reach the market, is turning its focus to ocean-based innovations as Southeast Asia confronts worsening climate threats and a persistent shortage of funding for solutions that can both cut emissions and strengthen coastal resilience.
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Launching the tenth edition of the annual sustainability innovation competition in Singapore, Heng Li Lang, Temasek Foundation’s Head of Climate and Liveability, said the region was already experiencing increasingly severe heatwaves, wildfires, floods and typhoons.
“Climate change is here, and Southeast Asia [is being hit] hard,” Heng said at the Unlocking capital for sustainability Singapore summit, co-hosted with AT ONE IMPACT WEEK 2026 at Suntec Singapore Convention & Exhibition Centre on 10 September.
In her speech, Heng highlighted Europe’s recent hottest summer on record, followed by heatwaves and wildfires decimating France and Spain. She also cited the recent glacier collapse along the Nepal-Tibet border that triggered flash floods that killed hundreds, with thousands still missing.
“At home [here in Singapore], it is the same story: floods, landslides, typhoons and monsoons,” Heng said. “Sometimes heatwaves and floods [hit] the same city [in] the same year. The message is clear: we need solutions that cut emissions and help communities adapt and grow stronger.”
For Southeast Asia, the ocean is central to that effort.
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Our goal is to help big ideas become real solutions for global sustainability problems. We are the bridge between promising innovation and real-world impact for people and for the planet.
Heng Li Lang, Head of Climate and Liveability, Temasek Foundation
“As a maritime nation in the heart of Southeast Asia, the ocean is not just our backyard. It’s central to our trade, our food security and our climate future,” Heng stressed.
Most Southeast Asian countries are coastal, and their waters account for a substantial share of their territory. The blue economy contributes significantly to national economies, with ocean and inland-water resources accounting for up to 30 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in some Southeast Asian countries.
Yet the capital needed to make the ocean economy more sustainable remains far short of what is required.
A US$5.5 trillion funding gap
Asia Pacific faces a US$5.5 trillion funding gap to meet Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14, which covers the conservation and sustainable use of oceans, seas and marine resources by 2030, said May Liew, Chief Executive Officer of OCTAVE Capital, during the panel titled A decade of innovation: Closing the scale-up gap in Asia’s climate tech.
Despite holding a large share of the world’s marine resources, the region is falling far short of the investment needed to protect and sustainably use them.
The SDGs, adopted in 2015 with a 2030 deadline, are now well past their halfway point, but progress on SDG 14 remains off track. SDG 14, Life Below Water is also the least funded of the Sustainable Development Goals, underscoring the gap between the importance of the ocean and the capital available to protect it.
“We sit in a region that is rich in biodiversity,” said Liew, who is also Co-Managing Director of Asia Ocean Fund. “We are rich in natural resources. Ninety-five per cent of sea production is from our part of the world. Seventy-five per cent of mangroves is from our part of the world.”
For Liew, the investment case goes beyond conservation. Singapore, one of the world’s major maritime hubs, sits at the centre of the region’s shipping and trade networks. Its maritime sector contributes about 7 per cent of the country’s GDP and supports some 170,000 jobs across shipping, port operations and logistics.
“Ocean investing is [also] about looking at maritime trade and how it interacts with the ocean environment,” Liew said.
She said blue economy investors should take a holistic approach, investing in solutions that can make maritime industries more sustainable while protecting the ecosystems they depend on.
“At the end of the day, the industry needs to sit in a healthy environment [to thrive],” she said.
From ideas to scale
For climate and ocean technologies, financing alone may not be enough to get a promising idea to market, underscored Anthony Chong, Director, Venture Creation & Market Access, Innovation and Enterprise at A*STAR.
“It’s not so much the money that you give, [but] the development grant and infrastructure [that’s important]. It’s really about [gaining] access to [expertise and capacity that may] not easily be available,” said Chong.
For startups, that can mean access to specialised facilities, equipment, expertise and testing environments needed to develop and prove their technologies, he explained.
In the same panel, Kornel Tetera, Investment Director for Climate at Kibo Invest, pointed to Equatic, an ocean-based carbon removal company, as an example. Equatic won The Livability Challenge (TLC) in 2021, receiving a S$1 million prize, and used the platform’s publicity and access to partners to advance its technology.
“They took it to the next level as far as making sure they were taking advantage of all the publicity that they got, and the connections that [their investors] provided them,” Tetera said.
Equatic has since worked with Singapore’s national water agency PUB and UCLA to develop a demonstration plant in Tuas capable of removing 10 tonnes of carbon dioxide and producing 300 kilograms of carbon-negative hydrogen a day.
Tetera said the PUB pilot will help demonstrate the technology and is paving the way towards a full-scale commercial plant.
Making capital work
Catalytic funding and demonstration projects can help move ocean technologies from development to commercial deployment.
Presented by Temasek Foundation and organised by Eco-Business, The Liveability Challenge is taking this approach with a new Oceans theme for its 2027 edition, backed by Asia Ocean Fund.
The challenge’s 2027 edition has more than S$5.5 million in catalytic funding across three themes: Decarbonisation, Cool Earth and Oceans. Since 2018, the challenge has incubated 62 climate and sustainability technology start-ups and deployed S$18 million in catalytic funding, according to the organisers.
Anders Soh, Director, Programmes at Temasek Foundation, said the platform helps match innovative solutions with investors and other forms of capital while supporting real-world demonstration.
“A lot of [what] TLC is trying to achieve is also aligning all these objectives together,” Soh said. “Don’t just tell us about your good solution. Demonstrate or show us that your solutions can go to scale.”
Heng said their goal is to turn promising ideas into practical solutions.
“Our goal is to help big ideas become real solutions for global sustainability problems. We are the bridge between promising innovation and real-world impact for people and for the planet,” she said.
