Asia Science Mission

• Asia, with 60 per cent of the world’s population and 36 per cent of global gross domestic product, is undergoing significant transitions
• Without adaptation and mitigation, Asia is more exposed to physical climate risk than other parts of the world — putting global sustainability at risk
• High population and economic growth and associated vulnerability of the socio-ecological systems under the combined anthropogenic threats and climate change impacts.
• Biodiversity within and between ecosystems is declining rapidly in Asia, with human interventions negatively impacting the delicate balance of the natural ecosystem.

A meta-network system will be co-designed and co-produced with key stakeholders to redefine the challenges and deliver socially robust ensemble models (currently unavailable) to detect and predict dynamic changes in the socio-ecological systems. It will support critical environmental decision-making through verified data-generating capacity, scenario building and continuously updated assessments of critical SDGs with analytics (risk, resilience, trade-offs) on a demand-and-issue basis.

The multi-scale network system will facilitate generating science-based knowledge, particularly, for data-scarce environments, collecting input from various monitoring sources, connecting computational models with hyper-resolution, nested, integrated resource and social-human-cultural behavioural frameworks, and qualitative narratives. The science mission aims to work across various scales: regional (Asia), sub-regional (South Asia, East Asia) and local scale (Philippines as a pilot site).

The Future Earth Asia Regional Committee (FE-Asia) revitalized in June 2023, builds from a strong legacy of research and experience working deeply and across Asia with members from Future Earth National Committees in Australia, China, India, Korea, Japan, Mongolia, Philippines, Taipei, Thailand and regional networks focused on land (GLP-Japan), atmospheric science (ILEAPS-Korea), marine (SIMSEA), integrated sustainability research (MAIRS-RPO), health and pollution (HI-ASAP) and water (Water Futures Program). FE-Asia aims for international collaboration to address interconnected sustainability challenges, unpacking interactions between social, economic, and environmental systems. It seeks solutions that are systems based, locally actionable, and transformative to advance the SDG agenda. FE Asia will be the core networks from which the MHA will be built.