KUALA LUMPUR – As scientists, economists, financiers, and policymakers gathered to discuss the impact of climate at the Global Tipping Points conference last week, the air quality in the Malaysian capital was ranked among the worst in the world.
Toxic smog from fires in Indonesia enveloped the city and closed schools as conference delegates discussed how to prevent climate “tipping points” that could affect the world’s core functioning and future.
“A tipping point in any system is where amplifying feedbacks take over, where they’re strong enough to support a self-propelling change in that system,” said Tim Lenton, chair of Climate Change and Earth System Science at the University of Exeter and one of the conference organisers.
Once a climate tipping point has been crossed, the damage can become self-reinforcing and irreversible.
For example, once the ice sheets in Greenland and West Antarctica collapse, the process could be slowed but not stopped. Its effects would ripple through changing ocean currents, ocean acidification, and monsoon drying, pushing other systems towards their own limits.
“Every year over that threshold level of 1.5º [above the pre-industrial temperature level] of global warming is going to increase the risk of tipping these critical life support systems.”
The 2025 Global Tipping Points report estimates the tipping point for the ice sheets at around 1.5°C of warming above pre-industrial levels. The world is now at around 1.35 to 1.4°C.
The conference, hosted by the Centre for Planetary Health at Sunway University, was the first to focus on tipping points in Asia. It brought together experts to discuss both the alarming science and the “positive tipping points,” such as cheaper solar power.
Delegates adopted a declaration calling for a united front, with finance, education, health, law, and technology, to address climate issues.
The declaration’s most concrete steps include setting up a communications coalition, a faith-based toolkit for planetary health, and an Asia Tipping Points report by 2028.
The declaration also notes that “health is where the crisis is felt first, and where action pays back fastest”.
“Systems built for profit rather than people push their costs onto our bodies: the products of four industries (fossil fuels, ultra-processed food, tobacco and alcohol) cause at least a third of all deaths worldwide.”
It notes: “Health is the fastest lever: it must drive climate action rather than follow it, and health outcomes must be built into infrastructure and climate finance from the start, with health impact assessments showing decision makers the gains before they decide.”
Earlier, Alan Dangour, Wellcome Trust’s director of climate and health, told the conference: “Health makes climate change personal”, with the impact “felt by people, by communities, by children, by parents.”
“Using health as a cooperation mechanism allows the scientists rather than the politicians [to lead],” Josselyn Mothe, a WHO Asia-Pacific technical officer on air quality and health, told Health Policy Watch.
At the moment, however, “the health dimension is not embedded into [regional] action,” Mothe added. Health is not yet an “action lane” in frameworks such as the haze agreement of the region’s main political bloc, ASEAN.
“We are not a region to be rescued,” said Sultan Nazrin Muizzuddin Shah in the keynote address. “We are, in significant part, a region where the rescue is already underway, however unevenly, however incompletely.”
Bringing the conference to Kuala Lumpur, said co-chair Jemilah Mahmood, would “spotlight South and Southeast Asia’s lived realities and accelerate the positive tipping points we need for a healthier planet and future.”
Climate effects in Asia Pacific
A 2024 study by the Asian Development Bank estimates that climate change could reduce economic growth of developing Asia-Pacific by 17% by 2070 under a high-emissions scenario, and by as much as 41% by 2100.
This year’s El Niño, supercharged by climate change, is expected to bring more extreme events to the region. The fires in Indonesia are the worst in more than a decade, with about 175,000 people already experiencing respiratory illness since August.
Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, a global rice bowl that feeds 90 million people, is bracing for severe drought and saltwater intrusion. In India, monsoon rain is about 12% below the annual average, yet heavier downpours have triggered floods and landslides.
At the same time, the region is also home to more than half the world’s population, growing economies, and manufacturing capacity that leads the world in solar panels and electric-vehicle batteries.
The conference’s small scale put together financiers, faith leaders, academics, and health professionals, some of whom rarely talk to one another, in a region that bears a heavy impact.
The health test will come soon at COP31 in Antalya, which opens on 9 November with a Health Day but gives health no formal place in the negotiations.
Image Credits: Minh Tran, Annice Lyn / Sunway Centre for Planetary Health.
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