If ASEAN is to take the lead on climate, it must break a paradox not through compromise but through change. By Mehmet Enes Beşer There is a stunning paradox at the core of the Southeast Asian model of development, a paradox more desperate with each climate summit, energy crisis, and investment diversion. The ASEAN bloc has subscribed formally to world ...
The wires are laid. The technology is tested. Now, all it takes is the political will to connect the dots. By Mehmet Enes Beşer As Southeast Asia races to keep pace with surging energy demand amidst a global decarbonization wave, one question looms over the region: how can the region deliver clean, cheap, and secure electricity at scale over a ...
Embracing Decentralization towards a Green Future By Mehmet Enes Beşer The regional energy giant of Southeast Asia, Indonesia, is at the crossroads of its energy future. Its history of dependency on fossil fuels led by coal has driven economic development at the cost of environmental degradation and escalating greenhouse gas emissions. In answer to global climate imperatives, not to mention ...
ASEAN needs coherence between what it commits, what it aspires to, and what it delivers. By Mehmet Enes Beşer As the world is speeding towards a catastrophic climate tipping point, the role of the emerging economies has shifted from the periphery to center stage of global climate negotiations. Within this transformation, the ASEAN region has become a test site and ...
Delay is no longer possible. By Mehmet Enes Beşer Climate change is no longer a danger to Southeast Asia that may occur—climate change is everyday reality that humans are having trouble adjusting to. From rising oceans that menace coastal towns to the intense weather patterns annihilating food systems and livelihoods, the region is leading the charge on the climate crisis. ...
Institutionalization of climate action is what’s needed. By Mehmet Enes Beşer As the planet hurtles towards ecological tipping points, the climate crisis has reached not just an environmental crisis, but a civilizational emergency. Record-breaking heatwaves, disappearing coastlines, crashing biodiversity, and the oceans devouring land with an increasingly accelerating ferocity. Somewhere, this is felt—and politically under-served—more than in Southeast Asia. The ...
The Missing Link in Global Climate Ambitions By Mehmet Enes Beşer The green transformation in the car industry is no longer a vision of the future but a here-and-now necessity. Transport emissions account for almost a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, and the decarbonization of mobility is at the heart of both European and Asian climate policy. Rhetorical ...
EU-China Cooperation Matters Now More Than Ever By Mehmet Enes Beşer As the European Union seeks leadership in a broken and more uncertain world, the nature of its engagement with China is becoming a key test case—not merely of its geopolitical maturity but of its strategic endurance in the long term. In an increasingly bloc politics-, systemic competition-, and technology-diverging ...
EU and China Have No Choice But to Choose Cooperation Over Confrontation By Mehmet Enes Beşer Risk of an imminent trade war between the European Union and China on electric vehicles (EVs) has increased to become arguably the most pernicious flashpoint on today’s economic landscape. This is less about gaining access to markets or marginal tariff levels—but the very conceptualization ...
Baku is hosting the 29th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP29) By Tehran Tapdygov, Azerbaijani journalist, political observer Azerbaijan, Baku. Today these words are familiar to the whole world. A short period of independence and a huge road travelled. Baku has become the center of international negotiations. Especially after the ...