This report, and the workshop it is based on, follow several years of work on the security implications of climate change conducted by the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS) and the Clingendael Institute. Since beginning the project, two common refrains have emerged from across conferences and papers: one, that addressing climate impacts requires regional cooperation, and two, that climate offers the most obvious entry point for cooperation in South Asia. We decided to stress test these assumptions, in an effort to move the conversation substantially beyond “we must cooperate” to “what is required (and what is possible).” We did so by engaging decision-makers and experts from across the region and placing them in a simulated regional negotiation. Our thinking was that such an exercise would reveal behavioural and institutional constraints that may otherwise be invisible in conventional policy discussions. 

We found that while climate change is increasingly recognised as a shared regional concern, the political and institutional conditions necessary to address it collectively are limited. The gap between the transboundary nature of these challenges and the national orientation of policy- making is of significant consequence. While the gap cannot be resolved, it must certainly be acknowledged, and where possible, reconciled. Climate cooperation is also embedded in the wider context of South Asian geopolitics. Regional attitudes and sensitivities inform how states approach even those areas where interests ostensibly converge. In addition, material asymmetries mean that states can have different climate priorities even when they face similar, or sometimes the same, problems. 

What, then, does regional climate cooperation need to look like to function within South Asia’s realities? Our workshop discussions clarified the tension between designing cooperation around what is politically feasible versus doing so around what climate risks may require. Designing around political feasibility may make cooperation easier to establish, but could also constrain the functions that would make a regional mechanism useful. Designing around what climate risks require could result in more ambitious arrangements, but it also raises the chances of running into the same political sensitivities that have historically limited regional engagement. 

This report offers nine observations that South Asia’s decision-makers could use to evaluate whether new institutional designs are able to respond to the demands of climate change while accommodating regional realities. I am grateful to the experts we convened in Kochi in May 2026 for their thoughtful contributions—which form the backbone of this report—and to my IPCS colleagues, Ashutosh Nagda, Fiona Raval, Dr. Muneer Ahmed, Prerana Priyadarshi, and Tapan Bharadwaj, for distilling and shaping those contributions into analytical conclusions. Much like the workshop, the process of producing this report reflects the kind of cooperation our discussions sought to examine.

Ruhee Neog

Director, IPCS