Langkawi Declaration

We, the young people of the inaugural ASEAN Children and Youth Climate Summit, convened in Langkawi, Malaysia, from 2 to 4 September 2025, stand united in reaffirming our shared vision for a resilient, inclusive, just, and sustainable Southeast Asian region;

Acknowledging the urgent and disproportionate impacts of the climate crisis on present and future generations, we call upon the ASEAN Member States (AMS) and partners to act decisively, equitably, and in solidarity to safeguard our collective future;

Recalling the Bandar Seri Begawan Declaration on ASEAN Youth for Climate Action 2021 and the ASEAN Youth Statement 2024, we are deeply concerned by the continuously escalating climate crisis in Southeast Asia, including rising sea levels, pollution, extreme weather events, biodiversity loss, water insecurity, climate displacement, and migration;

Recognising that all AMS have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the recent General Comment No. 26 affirming every child’s right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment toward the physical well-being, livelihoods, education, and mental health of children and youth;

Recognising the efforts of AMS in the establishment of the ASEAN Centre for Climate Change in Brunei Darussalam, as a central mechanism for the consolidation of climate data, strategies, and implementation efforts; 

Acknowledging the determination of AMS to strengthen cooperation through the ASEAN Agreement on Disaster Management and Emergency Response (AADMER) on Disaster Risk Reduction in adaptation, disaster risk reduction, and resilience-building to protect communities from the adverse impacts of climate change;

Deeply Concerned that ASEAN youth continue to face limited opportunities for meaningful participation especially affected vulnerable groups, including children, young people, indigenous and local communities, people with disabilities, women and girls, stateless children in formal environmental and climate decision-making, as well as restricted access to green jobs, despite being among the most affected groups and representing the region’s greatest potential for innovation and leadership;

We call on ASEAN Leaders to recognise and act on the pressing environmental challenges facing our region, and urge them to consider the following policy recommendations. We welcome measurable and impactful initiatives led by ASEAN governments and stakeholders through multilateral cooperation.

IN THIS CONTEXT, we affirm the following priorities to guide youth action and partnership in addressing climate change and safeguarding our shared future:

• Youth Participation: Recognising the participatory rights of youth in shaping public policy, supporting their inclusion as rights-holders, drivers of change, and solution-makers, and reducing tokenism, ensuring that young leaders from diverse backgrounds are actively empowered and engaged with decision-making at every level;
• Climate Justice: Acknowledging that climate change is not only an environmental challenge but also a social justice issue. Climate change is driven by continuously increasing human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases in AMS, particularly from energy, transport, and Land Use, Land-Use Change, and Forestry sectors, which contribute significantly to global warming and disproportionately affect vulnerable groups, including children, young people, indigenous and local communities, people with disabilities, stateless children, women and girls, and gender diverse groups;
• Climate Change Education: Recognising the central role of education in building long-term resilience, and emphasising transformative climate change and environmental education that is age-appropriate and accessible information as a key priority for ASEAN;
• Biodiversity & Nature-based Solutions (NbS): Acknowledging ASEAN’s rich biodiversity and the vital role of ecosystem-based approaches, which provide essential services including provisioning, regulation, cultural, and supporting functions. Yet
  biodiversity loss continues at an alarming rate, driven not only by climate change but also by other pressures. Addressing biodiversity loss must go hand in hand with efforts to reduce the impacts of climate change;
• Disaster Risk Reduction and Management: Recognising that disasters and climate induced loss and damage are not only environmental events but also socio-economic challenges. This disproportionately affects vulnerable groups by disrupting livelihoods, displacing communities, and hindering access to education, health, and basic services, especially for children and young people across ASEAN.

IN AFFIRMING these priorities, we set out the following key recommendations for AMS and partners to translate them into action:

1. Meaningful Youth Participation in Policy Spaces

1.1. Institutionalise meaningful youth participation in climate and environmental policy processes at local, national, and regional levels of ASEAN, ensuring that youth perspectives are inclusively integrated into Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), National Adaptation Plans (NAPs), Long Term Strategies (LTS), and other official policy frameworks;

1.2. Establish an ASEAN-level network of national youth councils and youth parliaments formally recognised at all policy levels, supported by a dedicated youth-led agency and resources from AMS, to exchange best practices, strengthen governance, and coord nate joint initiatives and advocacies across the region;

1.3. Guarantee youth representation with dedicated funding support and capacity building in intergovernmental climate and environmental governance processes (such as United Nations Conference of Parties, COP, and United Nations Environmental Assembly, UNEA) through transparent, merit-based yet emphasising fair and inclusive selection processes, while adopting baseline data, indicators, and monitoring systems to measure youth engagement and impact, inclusive of synergies between different conventions encouraging collaboration;

1.4. Empower young people as active frontliners in the green economy by co-creating climate solutions with grassroots communities, promoting context-specific approaches, and unlocking opportunities in green jobs, entrepreneurship, and cross-sectoral collaboration with relevant stakeholders;

1.5. Encourage AMS to push forward the drafted ASEAN Environmental Rights Declaration into policies at all levels, fostering greater and more meaningful youth participation in the region.

2. Children and Youth-Centric Climate Policies (NDCs, NAPs, LTSs)

2.1. Uphold the agency of all children and youth as rights-holders and essential stakeholders in climate policy, while recognising their vulnerability to climate impacts and requiring AMS to establish indicators that track their inclusion and empowerment;

2.2. Guarantee universal access to early warning systems and climate information, ensuring all community layers, especially the most vulnerable, can receive and understand alerts, including availability of gender- and diversity-disaggregated data in climate risk assessments, budgeting, and policy design.

2.3. Enforce stronger vetting, monitoring, and accountability mechanisms for all development projects to prevent environmental degradation.

3. Integration of Climate Education

3.1. Call upon AMS to integrate comprehensive climate change education, including Disaster Risk Management knowledge and skills, into school curricula from early childhood education, while ensuring that children and youth are equipped with the relevant knowledge, skills, and values needed to address the climate crisis;

3.2. Encourage collaboration among governments, educators, civil society, and youth networks to develop culturally relevant, accessible, and multilingual climate education materials tailored to diverse communities across ASEAN;

3.3. Establish a youth-friendly and easily accessible online know edge hub and community-based learning with climate change and disaster risk reduction content that is integrated with formal and non-formal education;

3.4. Enhancing network connectivity and infrastructures for youth in rural and hard-to-reach areas, ensuring equal access to online climate education for all youth, addressing the needs of ethnic minorities, indigenous communities, people with disabilities, and other vulnerable communities.

4. Accelerating the Just Energy Transition

4.1. Phase out fossil fuel subsidies and redirect financial resources toward renewable energy infrastructures, transport, and green jobs, thereby accelerating a robust green industry according to AMS capacity;

4.2. Encourage AMS to establish tax incentives, fiscal benefits, and financing mechanisms for industries advancing circular economy practices, green energy, and sustainable innovation, with meaningful consultation with youth, academia, scientists, local communities and civil society stakeholders;

4.3. Affirm that ASEAN climate policies must be inclusive, just, and bottom-up, equitable access to affordable, reliable, and clean energy by ensuring that vulnerable communities such as children and youth, indigenous and local communities, people with disabilities, women and girls, smallholder farmers, fishing communities, and urban poor are not left behind, providing proper grievance mechanisms and capacity building for those affected, and equitably sharing the benefits of the green transition.

5. Climate-Resilient Social Services for Children and Youth

5.1. Ensure all schools, health facilities, and community infrastru ture are climate-resilient, low carbon, and equipped to strengthen disaster preparedness by integrating indigenous knowledge and early warning systems, increasing monitoring capacity, and ensuring accessible alerts for all;

5.2. Integrate a comprehensive climate-responsive approach across the health system, through the “One Health” framework, while ensuring access to mental health and psychosocial support to address climate-related trauma and climate anxiety among children and youth, and strengthen climate-sensitive disease surveillance systems to detect, monitor, and respond to emerging health risks exacerbated by climate change;

5.3. Establish child-sensitive and climate-responsive social protection programmes, including capacity-building of healthcare professionals and social workers, to safeguard those most affected by disasters, particularly children, the elderly, and vulnerable communities, ensuring inclusive and accessible support for all.

6. Climate Finance

6.1. Ensure that a predictable, adequate, and accessible dedicated climate finance (i.e., Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage and Adaptation Fund) is made for and channelled directly to youth-led and community-based projects by a defined proportion of the national budget, as well as upscaling youth capacity in green jobs;

6.2. Secure fair and adequate climate finance by demanding contributions from developed nations and carbon majors, recognizing their historical responsibility for the climate crisis;

6.3. Allocate grants-based funds for locally based climate adaptation strategies and projects, prioritising children, young people, indigenous and local communities, people with disabilities, stateless children, women and girls, and other vulnerable groups.

7. Sustainable Agriculture and Climate-Resilient Food System

7.1. Mandate the integration of indigenous knowledge and traditional practices into national agricultural policies with free, prior, and informed consent, ensuring guidance on the preservation of climate-resilient seeds in a decentralized ASEAN Community Seed Banks;

7.2. Establish robust farmers’ and fishing communities cooperatives and provide them with targeted subsidies and advocate for fair recognition of ASEAN crop exports, affordable access to precision technology, and micro-financing to empower collective bargaining and ensure equitable market access;

7.3. Redirect all agricultural subsidies and public funding away from fossil-fuel-based and petrochemical inputs towards incentivizing large-scale adoption of organic farming, agroecology, regenerative agriculture, research and development (R&D) for climate-resilient crops and feeds to restore soil health, carbon sequestration, and reduce dependence on vulnerable monoculture while safeguarding food and marine ecosystems;

7.4. Create an open-access ASEAN Digital Knowledge Platform to share sustainable practices, weather data, and market prices in local languages, bridging the gap between research institutions and farmers.

As children and youth of ASEAN, we recognise our responsibility to contribute to a just, sustainable, and climate-resilient future. In this spirit, WE COMMIT TO:

● Raise awareness and mobilise action by actively promoting education on climate literacy and sustainability among peers, schools, and communities, while utilising creative platforms such as arts, media, and technology to amplify the urgency of climate action and inspire behavioral change;

● Drive community-based solutions by being involved in grassroots initiatives, scaling up youth-led innovations, and fostering collaboration with local leaders, educators, and policymakers to ensure solutions are context-specific, inclusive, and sustainable;

● Emphasise accountability to leaders and corporations in a dressing the climate crisis, calling for good governance, strengt ening transparency, prioritising people over profits, and integrating ecosystems and the planet;

● Advocate to governments and corporations in historically high-emitting countries to uphold the Common but Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR) and amplify the voices of frontline communities to ensure that historical contributors deliver on their obligations;

● Commit to practicing sustainable lifestyles by reducing waste, adopting eco-conscious consumption habits, and inspiring peers to make everyday choices that align with climate friendly values and monitoring the progress of youth initiatives and assessing collective impact while encouraging greater support to support that all young people can actively participating in these efforts;

● Continue intergenerational collaboration by partnering with pa ents, educators, the private sector, civil society, and governments to co-create long-term climate strategies that safeguard the rights and futures of generations to come.

Therefore, we, the children and youth of ASEAN, CALL upon our Ministers and leaders to translate commitments into immediate and concrete actions. We call on AMS to act with courage, integrity, and urgency to ensure accountability, justice, and survival for all, particularly the accessible and gender-responsive financing, reparations, and loss and damage funds, to guarantee further protection of the frontline and most vulnerable communities and recognised stateless children in ASEAN as part of the community.

We urge ASEAN leaders to stand in solidarity with Southeast Asia communities, to defend our region’s biodiversity, and to lead a just and equitable transition away from fossil fuels and destructive industries. We also urge ASEAN leaders to collaborate and complement the efforts of different international conventions and mechanisms.

As present and future stakeholders in climate action, we commit to remaining steadfast partners in monitoring progress, amplifying voices, and advancing real solutions. The era of promises is over – the time for bold, accountable action is now.