Accelerating Impact Investments for Climate and Nature in Asia 2025

3.3 The right partnerships Equally important as forming partnerships is ensuring the right alignment between stakeholders across different sectors, sub-sectors and geographies. This is crucial to avoid wasting time and resources, as the expectations, mandates and risk tolerance of different partners can vary significantly. For example, some partners may prioritize impact-first goals and focus on delivering tangible social or environmental outcomes, while others may be driven by specific policies like corporate social responsibility (CSR), directing capital towards particular objectives. Government partners, on the other hand, typically have defined climate targets that shape their investment decisions. Experts interviewed for this report emphasized the importance of identifying the right stakeholders to make collaborations successful, including non- profits, industry associations and organizations like the World Economic Forum. They also stressed the importance of choosing the right timing and platforms to facilitate investment. At the heart of these partnerships, a coordinating partner is often needed to orchestrate the collective efforts and ensure smooth collaboration. Initiatives such as PAA Communities28 have successfully brought together diverse communities spanning areas like blue ocean conservation, sustainable land use and inclusive education to scale impact more effectively across regions. These communities pool vast domain expertise, enabling members and partners to use their collective strengths to address complex, multifaceted challenges. For example, one key question being explored is whether returns generated from impact-first investments can be recycled into future climate and nature investments, ensuring the sustainability of operations and continued impact-driven funding, as illustrated in case study 12. The World Economic Forum’s GAEA initiative is uniquely positioned to address these challenges. GAEA plays a critical role as a convenor, facilitating the 4P approach to harness philanthropic and concessionary impact capital for climate investments. GAEA is currently working to establish a global platform for investment innovation, with Asia serving as a strategic focal point. Its goal is to build a structured ecosystem that showcases Asian innovations and capabilities on the global stage, helping mobilize the resources needed to meet climate and nature goals both in the region and globally. Temasek Trust launched Co-Axis, the first global impact marketplace, in partnership with DBS Foundation and UBS Optimus Foundation in April 2024. The platform has curated around 100 impact opportunities so far. Co-Axis is designed to unlock risk capital and harness community- driven efforts to accelerate innovative solutions addressing some of the world’s most pressing sustainability challenges. The platform connects funders – such as family offices, corporates, philanthropists, high-net-worth individuals and private foundations – with early-stage ventures, charitable organizations and blended finance projects that have significant impact potential. In addition to its impact opportunities, Co-Axis serves as a knowledge hub where communities can exchange best practices, access valuable insights, build capacity and participate in training programmes. This collaborative space is designed to forge multi-sector partnerships and help both funders and opportunity owners maximize their impact. Co-Axis is also actively forming new partnerships to strengthen its ability to attract investors and support global impact-driven projects. Through its recent partnership with Arta Finance, Co-Axis provides high-net-worth individuals with seamless access to philanthropic giving opportunities, expanding the platform’s reach and enhancing its potential impact. The platform offers a variety of instruments, focused on using philanthropic and catalytic capital. These instruments are designed to mobilize additional funding and potentially form blended finance structures. Among them, recoverable grants and similar tools can be reinvested into future impact opportunities, creating a cyclical model that amplifies impact over time. GAEA plays a critical role as a convenor, facilitating the 4P approach to harness philanthropic and concessionary impact capital for climate investments. CASE STUDY 12 Co-Axis Accelerating Impact Investments for Climate and Nature in Asia 21