Beyond Intentions: Opportunities & Imperatives Ahead for Impact Investing

Distinguished guests, friends, and colleagues, 

I’m very pleased to join you today at the 4^th Impact Investing Roundtable 2026, co-organised by the Centre for Impact Investing and Practices (CIIP) and Temasek. In four years, this has grown from a modest gathering into what we see as an action-oriented platform where capital meets conscience to deliver scalable impact. 

1. We meet at a time of profound turbulence. Geopolitical fragmentation and fraying multilateralism are driving volatility — and too often pushing climate action, inclusive growth, and equitable healthcare down the agenda. That makes the role of long-term, impact-oriented capital even more critical.


2. Nowhere are the stakes higher than in Asia. Our region is warming at twice the global average. Close to a billion livelihoods are threatened by rising seas, and levels in Asia are rising at 1.3x the global average. Severe weather events are being experienced more frequently, and more than three in four disaster-related displacements globally occur here in Asia.


3. The pressures are not only environmental. Many Asian economies are heading into “super-aged” societies. By 2040, nearly a third of East and South-East Asia will be over 60. When the average farmer is over 50 years old and rural communities are shrinking, food security becomes a cross-border resilience challenge — and an urgent call for innovation.


4. These are all interconnected, cross-border challenges. Solving them requires coordinated action — and new partnerships across government, investors, corporates, and philanthropy are needed for systemic outcomes. We need to find more financing that is willing to go first, prove models, and crowd in others.


5. At Temasek Trust we seek to contribute as a catalyst and connector. We are guided by four priorities: Planet, People, Peace, and Progress. They are linked. Without a healthy Planet, People cannot thrive; without Peace, there is no stability for investment; and Progress must be inclusive to endure. Our aim is to turn these convictions into tangible, scalable impact.


6. That impact is only possible if we can mobilise partners and deploy innovative financing. As you just heard, for climate adaptation and resilience alone, the global financing gap each year until 2035 is about US$350 billion, but only US$120 billion has been committed. At the same time, globally, the investment opportunity in adaptation and resilience stands at US$1 trillion. We can all step up to test new forms of philanthropy and innovative financing. This includes catalytic capital — taking early risk to prove solutions, unlock markets, and crowd in larger pools of investment.


7. We are doing this in Temasek Trust through our catalytic capital for climate and health, we call it C3H for short. Last year, we committed more than US$1m alongside the Richardson Family (RF), a UK-based family office, to support and scale climate-and-health solutions through Co-Axis, which is our digital impact marketplace. More recently, we also invested in injewelme, which is a digital health start-up specialising in contactless, data-driven health monitoring — including climate-related stress factors. Today, Co-Axis connects a growing network of over 500 impact opportunities and capital providers globally.


8. We also want to strengthen the pipeline of investable impact solutions. Through the Amplifier programme by CIIP and the Philanthropy Asia Alliance (PAA), over 70 partners — including SHEIN, Macquarie, and Mastercard — are paired with start-ups in a structured 12-month mentorship programme to help scale the next generation of impact leaders.


9. I am pleased that the 10 Amplifier companies from the 2025-26 cohort are here today. They are impact makers across the textile value chain, sustainable solutions for hospitality and tourism supply chains, and access to employment. Please join me in congratulating them for making it through this rigorous selection process.


10. Looking ahead, CIIP and PAA will partner the Asian Development Bank to extend the Amplifier model to water resilience, which is an underfunded frontier in Asia’s sustainable development agenda.


11. All these point to a broader shift: climate adaptation and resilience are becoming central investment themes. Rising temperatures create serious risks — but also opportunities for those who are ready to price risk early, to back solutions, and scale what works.


12. To help investors act with confidence, we need clearer maps. The new report launched today, Climate Adaptation & Resilience in Asia: Pricing Risk, Sizing Opportunities, Financing Solutions, is the first of a series dedicated to climate adaptation and resilience in Asia — and CIIP will continue to provide updated sector maps and funding flow dashboards as part of a contribution to public good. We would like to thank our collaborators — Invesco, ImpactSF, and Temasek for working on this with us. Looking ahead, we invite anyone keen to support this effort to address Asia’s most urgent adaptation and resilience needs to join us as partners for future editions.


13. Our theme “Beyond Intentions: Opportunities and Imperatives Ahead for Impact Investing” — is a reminder that good intent is not a strategy. If we are serious about outcomes, we must do three things: we must price climate and social risk honestly; we must build investable structures that blend catalytic and commercial capital; and we must measure what matters so successful models can be replicated and scaled.


14. Momentum is already building. There are solutions out there. What's more scarce is perhaps execution capital. I invite each of you to make a concrete commitment during this Roundtable: whether it is a partnership you will form, a pilot you will fund, a risk you will underwrite, or a policy barrier you can help remove. That is how we turn ambition into actionable outcomes.

Let me close by congratulating CIIP and Temasek on this year’s Roundtable and to thank all partners and participants. I wish you a productive discussion and I look forward to our collective commitments — and impact outcomes — that will follow from today.