Regional cooperation in Asia and the Pacific is no longer just about proximity—it’s about purpose. Whether building physical and digital infrastructure that connects countries and communities or fighting common threats such as intense economic shocks, rampant pollution and the rapid multiplier of illicit cross border activities, regional and sub-regional organizations are redefining how they work, stepping up to build public goods, confront shared problems, and explore new frontiers.

The shifting global order is reshaping what multilateralism looks like in practice —and opening new spaces in which UNDP can support human development and ambitious climate response.

The region is home to a rich ecosystem of regional and sub-regional organizations: the Pacific Islands Forum, ASEAN, APEC, SAARC, SPC, MRC, AIIB and Asian Development Bank, among others. Their composition, constitutions and mandates vary from trade and security to climate action and economic integration. Some are intergovernmental, while others are development banks. But they share a common purpose: to advance regional solutions to regional challenges.

Increasingly, the challenges faced by the Asia Pacific region demand new partnerships to pool expertise, align strategies, and deliver results that no single entity or country can deliver alone. So how should UNDP evolve and advance its own regional engagements to respond to the changes unfolding across the region?

First, a little bit of history. UNDP partnerships and collaboration with many of these organizations stretches back over decades. Our technical cooperation with ASEAN began in the mid-1970s; in 1977, UNDP became a formal Dialogue Partner—the only UN agency to hold this distinction. In a similar spirit, UNDP supported the technical groundwork and convening efforts that contributed to the establishment of the Mekong River Commission.

Today and for the foreseeable future, our role is one of co-creation, leveraging our diverse mandate and capabilities to meet the region’s expansive ambitions and scale sustainable development across geographic, intellectual and operational borders.

In Southeast Asia, a five-year UNDP initiative with ASEAN and PEMSEA tackles river pollution across six countries, linking upstream river basin management with downstream marine conservation. The project applies, with funding from GEF, a ‘source-to-sea’ governance model to protect vital ecosystems like the Bay of Bengal, South China Sea, Gulf of Thailand, and the Indonesian Sea—enhancing both climate resilience and regional sustainability.

In the Pacific, a landmark 2024 Memorandum of Understanding between the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat and UNDP is aligning development expertise with the region’s 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent. The partnership focuses on political leadership, governance, people-centered development, and regional security—demonstrating how multilateralism can be grounded in shared priorities and mutual accountability.

Across the broader Pacific architecture, a UNDP collaboration with the Council of Regional Organisations of the Pacific (CROP)—including SPREP, SPC, and FFA—is harmonizing efforts under the UN Pacific Strategy.

Collaborations like these benefit from agile design and systems thinking. Whether managing threatened natural resources, responding to intensifying climate-induced displacement, or building digital and AI infrastructure, the regional offer is one of specificity, and trust and knowledge of ‘the neighborhood’ that global mechanisms often struggle with, and local efforts cannot get to.

Going forward, we aim build on the following strengths to strengthen the regional partnership offer:

• First, with deep country presence, UNDP can foster regional collaboration, enabling the design and implementation of cross-border programmes essential for challenges like climate resilience. In the early stages of the Mekong Commission, for instance, UNDP’s studies and analysis shaped the Commission’s work, ensuring sustainable resource, energy and water management across Mekong-dependent nations.

• Second, UNDP’s focus and expertise in governance— in public sector reform, decentralization, and national data and monitoring systems—helps regional organizations and their member states build systems and platforms that are inclusive and responsive, with related improvements to national platforms. An illustration of this is the Regional SDGs Taskforce, supported by UNDP and SPC.

• Third, UNDP’s broad sector and institutional reach—across ministries of finance, environment, justice, and more—enables both vertical and horizontal integration, essential for tackling complex, transnational, cross-cutting issues requiring multi-country engagement and action, such as pollution, biodiversity loss or digital transformation.

• Fourth, with its global policy network, UNDP contributes knowledge, research, and policy analysis linked to global conventions and normative agendas, to support the regional bridge between the national and the global. The Social Innovation Platforms (SIPs), co-developed with ADB and others, help countries learn from each other to localize the SDGs through investment-ready portfolios that attract blended finance.

As regional organizations evolve, here are three reasons it has become critical for UNDP to play a greater role in unlocking shared value:

• The growing demand to build-out regional public goods, including digital infrastructure and shared data platforms, regional carbon markets and climate finance mechanisms, joint vaccine procurement systems and transboundary natural resource management.
• The collective strength needed to tackle regional public bads, leveraging the scale and legitimacy of regional platforms to act decisively on issues like pollution, deforestation, cybercrime, and illicit financial flows with joint monitoring, enforcement, and policy coordination.
• The efficacy of exploring new frontiers together. Whether it’s artificial intelligence, green hydrogen, or nature-based solutions, regional cooperation can accelerate innovation and ensure no country is left behind. Initiatives like the ASEAN Ending Plastic Pollution Innovation Challenge show how regional platforms can bring together startups, citizens, and the private sector to deliver scalable solutions.

In a world where global cooperation is often gridlocked, regionalism offers a path forward—not as multilateralism lite, but as multilateralism essential.