Adaptation Asia

Our approach to adaptation finance

35% of Southeast Asia’s GDP is at risk from climate change by 2050.

Yet finance for climate adaptation accounts for only 12% (USD 3.4bn) of annual climate finance flows to the region. This shortfall in financing drives greater losses and damages, disproportionately affecting vulnerable communities.

The Panra Fund is our solution: a new blended adaptation and resilience fund designed for farmers, combining revenue-based lending and embedded ecosystem technology.

Locally led

Agrifood systems are the world’s biggest employer, providing livelihoods to over a billion people. Yet, their underpinning ecosystems are deeply tied to local contexts, making a one-size-fits-all investment approach untenable.

Using our established networks across Southeast Asia, we identify impactful business opportunities with talented teams, and then partner closely to help them achieve long-term, sustainable growth, financial returns, and positive impact.

We work closely with experts in impact investment, agronomy and climate science across the region in order to deliver tangible adaptation and resilience outcomes.

Resilience driven

Resilience can be measured, but flows of climate adaptation finance are hampered by the lack of verifiable resilience data.

Adaptation Asia is developing the Panra Fund in partnership with TerrAvant, a resilience-fintech and social enterprise that converts farm and ecosystem data into digital Resilience Assets - channeling finance to the frontline, with the majority of revenues from each instrument flowing to farmers and land stewards.

Our model verifies and monetises outcomes such as improved biodiversity, water, soil health, vegetation and people's needs. Thus creating a dual-return model, delivering financial returns to investors and direct, performance-based ecosystem payments to farmers.

Blended finance

Panra provides patient and flexible revenue-based finance (RBF) to regenerative agriculture businesses involved in the supply of agricultural inputs, production, transformation, and product distribution. RBF is well suited to agribusinesses due to the highly seasonal nature of their business models, cashflows and operational environment.

The Panra Fund is a blended finance vehicle, bringing together commercial and catalytic capital alongside a technical assistance facility. Our model unlocks revenue-based financing and Resilience Asset innovation to build lasting resilience for agrifood systems in Southeast Asia.

We work with agricultural communities across Southeast Asia.

The Panra Fund aims to support more than 1.8 million farmers, 60% of them women, across 5 million hectares in adopting climate-resilient practices over the next decade.

By backing agribusinesses directly, the fund seeks to enhance resilience, strengthen adaptive capacity, and improve ecosystem health.

Resilience Asset revenues provide direct financial incentives for farmers, advancing food security, gender equity, and measurable adaptation outcomes in some of Southeast Asia’s most climate-exposed communities.

Our expertise in rural communities enables us to deliver flexible investment in financial assets that are nature-based, scientifically sound, and driven by local communities.

• Smallholder Farming In SE Asia, 75% of vulnerable populations reside in rural areas, where agriculture is their primary source of income. By 2050, 20% of the region’s population will face food insecurity due to a projected 10% decline in agricultural productivity.

  
  

  The world’s 600 million smallholder farmers (100 million of which reside in SE Asia), working on less than two hectares of land, produce roughly 30–34% of the global food supply yet, most financing available to smallholder farmers is poorly suited to their reality. Without measures to help smallholder farmers adapt to climate change, it is estimated that global agricultural productivity will decrease by 17% by 2050.

  
  

• Coastal Communities 80% of Southeast Asia’s population lives in coastal or low-lying areas, which are increasingly threatened by sea-level rise, cyclones, flooding, and heatwaves. The region also contains 40% of the world’s coral reefs and 35% of the world’s mangroves - critical ecosystems that are under urgent threat.

  
  

  Coastal communities in low lying regions and in small island states are some of the most vulnerable to climate change worldwide. Yet adaptation finance dedicated to help coastal communities conserve, restore and protect coastal and marine habitats is falling critically short of what is needed.