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From Sustainability, to Abundance, to Resilience

Our purpose remains consistent with the inaugural 2024 report: to spark meaningful conversations and highlight actionable opportunities for the startups, scale-ups, and SMEs building Southeast Asia's green economy — the businesses turning sustainability from a cost into a source of jobs and growth.

This is also the year we changed the report's name, from Southeast Asia Green Economy Landscape to ASEAN Green Economy Landscape. It's a small change in wording, but a deliberate one: we believe the grouping itself, not just the countries within it, has a bigger role to play in building the region's green economy in the years ahead through shared standards, infrastructure, and markets, rather than separate national efforts moving at separate speeds.

Startups, scale-ups, and SMEs are the engines of experimentation, agility, and practical innovation. They push boundaries, fill gaps in capability, and often commercialise the very solutions that bigger players later adopt and deploy at scale. Our goal is to support these innovators in seeing where they fit — and where they can lead — in Southeast Asia's transition.

Much of the research on Southeast Asia's green economy, understandably, speaks to governments, multilateral institutions, and large corporates — the organisations with the scale to move entire economies. But a green economy also needs innovation, and much of that happens outside the biggest organisations: new technologies, and just as often new business models, new ways of financing a project, or new partnerships connecting markets. Startups, scale-ups, and SMEs are where a lot of that innovation actually happens. Our goal is to help them see where they fit — and even where they can lead.

Our own thinking has evolved with each edition. The sustainability mindset that shaped our 2024 report taught us to respect limits: reduce emissions, cut waste, live within what the planet can support. Last year, we turned to Abundance — borrowed from Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson's book of the same name — the idea that a green economy could be less about cutting back and more about building the capacity to do more: better systems and regulation, and stronger partnerships across sectors and even countries.

This year, our thinking has moved again, to resilience. It is the lens we have applied to every sector and country section in this Landscape. It is also exactly where startups, scale-ups, and SMEs matter: closer to the ground than governments or multinationals, and quicker to adapt when conditions change, they are well placed to turn disruption into opportunity.

As with past editions, we draw on the exceptional research produced by global and regional organisations, work that maps the scale of the opportunity and the shifts needed to capture it. This year, our most used sources are:


We recommend them for your further reading, and to keep up with the news, Eco-Business. See here for more of our sources.

Note: We have used “Southeast Asia” generally to refer to the region and “ASEAN” to refer to the organisation or the region in the context of the organisation; and “ASEAN-6” to refer to the six countries covered in this Landscape.


Published by Padang & Co, September 2026

This report is based on publicly available information, proprietary datasets, and expert inputs. The findings, interpretations, and views expressed in this report do not constitute professional advice and may evolve as new data emerges. While care has been taken in its preparation, Padang & Co assumes no responsibility for errors, omissions, or outcomes arising from its use.