What can Asia do to avoid crossing crucial climate tipping points?

Petaling Jaya, Malaysia – Ambulance sirens blaring throughout cities amid deadly heat waves. Sustained wildfires that worsen cross-border air pollution and kill thousands. Weakening ocean currents that devastate crops and flood communities.

These are some of the signs of a planet approaching critical thresholds as a result of human-induced climate change. Beyond these climate tipping points, the Earth’s natural systems could undergo self-propelling, potentially irreversible changes.

How close are we to crossing the thresholds? And more importantly, what can Asia, home to about 60% of the world’s population, do to avert them? That was the central question at the four-day Global Tipping Points Conference held in Malaysia earlier this month. It was the third edition of the conference series, which was launched in Britain in 2022, and the first one to be held in Asia.

With global warming now set to breach 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, failing to meet the limit agreed upon by the 2015 Paris Agreement, scientists say the Earth’s systems are at risk of crossing multiple climate tipping points.

For one, coral reefs in warm tropical waters are dying at an unprecedented rate and scale, as their thermal tipping point of 1.2 C of warming has already been crossed. Nearly all of the world’s coral reefs may be gone by 2075, the International Union for Conservation of Nature warned last week.

The Global Tipping Points Conference, attended by over 500 experts and stakeholders from across Asia and Europe, covered how to mobilize law, finance, health systems and religious communities more efficiently to catalyze positive changes for our environment. | Annice Lyn / Sunway Centre for Planetary Health

That means the diverse ecosystem that hosts over a million species of marine life, as well as a key revenue source for the fisheries and tourism industries, is being lost. Parts of polar ice sheets and some regional mountain glaciers may have also crossed tipping points, while the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, a giant ocean current that moves heat and nutrients to the north across the Atlantic Ocean, is at risk of collapse. If it continues to weaken, it would make Northwest Europe’s winters more severe while prolonging heat waves in the Southern Hemisphere.

“The fact is ... overshoot (of the 1.5 C target) is now inevitable,” said climatologist and conference co-chair Johan Rockstrom of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. He was referring to a United Nations Environment Program report in September that concluded that the only option left for humanity to avert catastrophic impacts of climate change is to take the “overshoot, peak and decline” scenario.

“The challenge is to go from linear incremental change at best to now find transformative, many times exponential, pathways towards a safe landing that can secure prosperity, but also equity and resilience for humanity,” he said.

The conference, held in a suburban township southwest of Kuala Lumpur, was also impacted by an ongoing environmental and health crisis: many attendees wore masks and complained of sore throats due to the transboundary toxic haze, caused by slash-and-burn agricultural clearing and peatland fires in Indonesia — a crisis that was made worse by climate change.

Speakers and participants stressed, however, that “positive tipping points” are already emerging in many sectors and regions.

The skies of Petaling Jaya, Malaysia, are covered with smog due to wildfires in the region on Oct. 15. | TOMOKO OTAKE

Tim Lenton, founding director of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter and another co-chair of the conference, said that if we carefully craft a social and economic system that develops, adopts and amplifies zero-emissions technologies such as electric vehicles and solar panels, thus moving away from fossil fuels, we can tip the balance in the right direction.

In Norway, for example, the percentage of EVs in new car sales has grown over the past decade to reach almost 100%. Lenton credited the work of musician and environmentalist Morten Harket, who rigorously campaigned and won support for policies that incentivized the uptake of EVs.

“A very few people, but committed actors with a coherent plan, can tip a whole market and country,” Lenton said.

Another example is the recent solar panel boom in Pakistan, where, as a result of dramatic falls in solar panel prices, people who previously had no access to electricity are rapidly installing PV panels in off-grid or mini-grid settings.

Attendees from Pakistan said that rooftop solar panels are so popular in the country now that they are being used as wedding dowries.

According to Renewables First, a Pakistan-based think tank, and U.K.-based Ember, 27 gigawatts of distributed solar was deployed in Pakistan in just two years through June 2025, the same capacity as all coal, gas and oil plants that have ever been built in the country.

Paramedics treat a patient in an ambulance after he collapsed in the shower during a heat wave in Chestnut Ridge, New York, on July 2. | REUTERS

The country’s solar PV imports surged from under 1 GW in 2018 to over 51 GW by early 2026, which also drove a 40% drop in oil and gas imports between 2022 and 2024.

Apart from the energy transition, the conference, attended by over 500 experts and stakeholders from across Asia and Europe, covered how to mobilize law, finance, health systems and religious communities more efficiently to catalyze positive changes for the environment.

Toward the end of the conference, with British singer-songwriter Cat Stevens in attendance, a 260-page “faith-based toolkit” was unveiled to help faith leaders incorporate planetary health in their religious teachings, considering that over three-quarters of the world’s population identifies as religious.

Jemilah Mahmood, a gynecologist and executive director of Sunway Centre for Planetary Health who served as the conference co-chair, said the event was aimed at introducing tipping points science to people in Asia and giving them the opportunities to speak for themselves about the positive changes that are happening in this region.

“We do have a sense of urgency ... we don’t have time,” she told reporters after the conference. “We need to rapidly scale up what we’re doing (positively). And therefore we have to recognize that we can’t do it alone. We now need to build a coalition that will move forward together.”

Travel expenses for the Global Tipping Points Conference were paid by Sunway Centre for Planetary Health. No part of this article was shared with the organizers prior to publication.