About The Cooler Earth 2020

Air pollution from human activity prematurely kills 7 million people every year and plastics can be found in even the most remote areas of our land and oceans. Climate change impacts could cause economic losses to the ASEAN region of USD230 billion every year by 2100. Indigenous communities have been displaced due to conflict. Children and youth from disadvantaged groups are missing quality healthcare and education. Gender inequality remains a persistent reality.

The climate and environmental emergency movement has reached a tipping point. Millions of youth activists in cities worldwide took to the streets last year to protest inaction over climate change. This year, protests against racial injustice and inequality spanned the globe.

Businesses need to anticipate the financial and business risks and opportunities associated with sustainable business practices, in order to thrive in a post-pandemic world. Individuals need to be more self-aware of our day-to-day behaviours, driving demand for sustainable and responsible products and services.

Together, the private sector and civil society have the power to influence government and regulators towards responsible policies and investments that will catalyse sustainable development.

COVID-19 has caught the world unprepared, despite the repeated warnings of the scientific and medical community, causing a global health crisis while also disrupting the economy and changing our very way of life. Unfortunately, this might just be a preview of the greater challenges ahead, if the climate and environmental crises are left unchecked. A sustainable, resilient future will need businesses to re-look at the triple bottom-line – People, Planet, Profits – with a new lens, one that goes beyond a trade-off mentality, to instead using business as a force for good. Only by focusing on Recovery, Resilience, and Responsibility, will businesses and communities emerge stronger and better prepared for future challenges.

The Cooler Earth is our mission to convene global citizens, experts and important stakeholders, to deliberate on what you can do today as an individual and as a business to shape a more sustainable tomorrow. We invite individuals, businesses, civil society and policy-makers from across ASEAN to join in the conversation by participating in interactive and insightful events on various sustainability themes. 

Our goal is also to encourage participants to embrace sustainability and take action towards shaping a kinder society and a less sweltering planet (hence "Cooler").

Join CIMB and its knowledge partners, World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), Impacto, and Think City for a thought-provoking, pragmatic, and persuasive series of engagement sessions on various environmental and social aspects that are important to you.

The Cooler Earth motif has adapted its colours from Climate Stripes, a visualisation of rising temperature from cool (blue) to warm (red), reflecting how it threatens ecosystems, including our social and economic fabric. In our motif, the red stripes, reflecting the current scenario, slowly transform back to blue, which is and should be the collective responsibility and mission of humankind and every effort such as this summit.