The Paris Agreement set a global goal to limit warming to 1.5°C, yet Earth has now exceeded this threshold for an entire year. A 1.5°C world brings escalating risks: stronger heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, and extreme rainfall. Hong Kong experienced these impacts in 2025, with the heaviest August rainfall since 1884, the hottest June on record, and an unprecedented number of rainstorm warnings and tropical cyclones. Surpassing 1.5°C increases the likelihood of tipping points, including weakening ocean circulation, rapid permafrost thaw, and widespread coral reef collapse. Rising seas are already threatening low‑lying regions. The window for action is rapidly closing. To secure a livable future, we must accelerate climate ambition and transition to resilient, net‑zero development.

Session Learnings:

• Understand the consequences of exceeding 1.5°C warming, including amplified extreme weather, sea‑level rise, and risks to vulnerable regions—illustrated through Hong Kong’s recent climate records.
• Recognize the potential for cascading climate tipping points, such as ocean circulation slowdown, permafrost thaw, and coral reef collapse, and their irreversible impacts on ecosystems and societies.
• Identify the urgent actions required for a net‑zero, climate‑resilient future, including energy transitions, ecosystem protection, emissions reductions, and the role of research and innovation in driving evidence‑based climate solutions.

Post-Event Actions:

• Integrate insights into decision‑making, applying the latest climate science to strengthen organizational strategies, risk assessments, and long‑term planning.
• Advance climate‑resilient and net‑zero initiatives, such as accelerating decarbonization efforts, scaling renewable energy, and supporting ecosystem protection within their spheres of influence.
• Champion cross‑sector collaboration, engaging with policymakers, researchers, and industry partners to develop and implement bold, evidence‑based climate solutions.

Agriculture and our current food systems are among the leading drivers of global nature loss, while also being highly vulnerable to our rapidly changing climate. With Hong Kong relying on imports for more than 90% of its food, our city faces significant risk from the rapidly changing climate and biodiversity decline. This session will explore vulnerabilities land use and agriculture, fisheries and global food supply chains exposed by climate change and highlight how businesses must rethink their role in shaping resilient and responsible food systems. Going beyond identifying risks, the session will deep dive into how businesses can evolve and transform supply chains and business models through responsible sourcing, regenerative practices and strategies to not only reduce risk but address the twin crises of climate and nature.

Session Learnings:

• How food systems are central and critical to global climate change and biodiversity decline crises
• Where the climate change and biodiversity risks lie for businesses that have exposure, direct or indirect, with food systems
• Practical approaches for organisations to evolve supply chains to create more sustainable food systems

Post-Event Actions:

• Moving beyond risk mitigation to support biodiversity and climate resilience in supply chains and procurement
• Embedding sourcing practices that prioritise sustainability and regenerative models into current business models

The disclosure landscape for climate and nature-related risks is shifting rapidly in Hong Kong and globally. With HKEX’s enhanced ESG reporting requirements taking effect, the international rollout of ISSB standards (IFRS S1 and S2), and the emergence of the TNFD framework, companies face an increasingly complex web of compliance obligations. This panel brings together regulators, standard-setters, and advisory experts to help businesses understand what is now required, what is coming next, and how to build internal governance structures that satisfy both mandatory reporting standards and growing investor expectations. The discussion will address practical challenges in data collection, metrics, and assurance readiness, while exploring how robust disclosure can move beyond a box-ticking exercise to become a strategic tool for managing climate and nature-related risks and opportunities.

Session Learnings:

• Understand the current and upcoming regulatory requirements for climate and nature-related disclosure in Hong Kong, including HKEX’s enhanced ESG reporting rules and their alignment with ISSB standards (IFRS S1 and S2).
• Learn how the TNFD framework complements existing climate disclosure standards and what practical steps businesses should take now to prepare for nature-related reporting.
• Gain insights on the data collection, metrics, and assurance readiness challenges that companies face in meeting evolving compliance baselines, and hear how leading firms are addressing them.
• Explore how institutional investors and lenders are using disclosure data to inform capital allocation, engagement, and risk pricing, and what this means for the quality bar companies must meet.
• Understand the governance structures and internal capabilities required to embed climate and nature reporting into board-level decision-making and enterprise risk management.

Post-Event Actions: 

• Conduct a gap analysis of your organisation’s current climate and nature-related disclosures against HKEX, ISSB, and TNFD requirements, identifying priority areas for improvement.
• Establish or strengthen internal governance structures for overseeing climate and nature risk disclosure and assurance.
• Develop a phased roadmap for adopting TNFD-aligned nature-related disclosures alongside existing climate reporting obligations.
• Engage auditors and external advisors to assess assurance readiness ahead of mandatory sustainability disclosure assurance timelines.
• Review investor relations and stakeholder communications strategies to ensure disclosure outputs are meeting the expectations of capital providers.

Physical climate risks are rising, and so is the financial exposure for companies and investors who fail to act. This session answers a blunt question: how are you going to survive? From physical asset vulnerability to transition shocks, leading practitioners will share how they are stress-testing portfolios, embedding climate risk into accounting, and building adaptive responses. Moving beyond disclosure to hard risk management, learn what worst-case scenario planning looks like, how to quantify what you cannot afford to ignore, and why the businesses on the forefront today will be the ones standing tomorrow.

Session Learnings:

• Stress-testing for survival: Approaches for modelling climate scenarios and translating physical risk into financial exposure
• Embedding climate into accounting: Methods for integrating climate risk into asset valuation, provisioning, and corporate balance sheets
• From assessment to response: Pathways for adapting operations, supply chains, and capital allocation in response to climate risk
• The investor lens: What asset managers and banks consider when assessing a company’s climate resilience
• Hong Kong-specific risks: Perspectives on addressing typhoon, flood, and heat stress vulnerabilities in a dense urban context

Post-Event Actions:

• Reflect on whether your current scenario analysis approach captures the right climate risks for your portfolio
• Flag climate risk as a topic for your next cross-functional meeting between finance and risk teams
• Identify one or two questions to ask your asset managers about their climate stress testing practices
• Note which of your assets or operating locations may be most exposed to local climate hazards

Incremental emissions reductions are no longer enough. Leading companies across sectors are now pursuing carbon-negative and nature-positive strategies that require fundamental shifts in how they operate, invest, and compete. This session brings together corporates at the forefront of this transition to share how they are setting credible science-aligned targets, decarbonising operations and value chains, and investing in nature restoration. Panellists will confront the real barriers businesses face, including technology gaps, cost pressures, supply chain complexity, and the challenge of maintaining competitiveness while pursuing ambitious environmental commitments. The discussion will draw on practical case studies to illustrate what is working, what still needs to be solved, and how Hong Kong companies can align transition strategies with the city’s evolving policy direction.

Session Learnings:

• Understand what it means in practice to pursue carbon-negative and nature-positive targets, including the science-based frameworks that underpin credible corporate commitments.
• Learn from real-world case studies how leading Hong Kong and regional companies across property, retail, and environmental services are decarbonising operations, greening supply chains, and investing in nature restoration.
• Identify the most significant barriers to business model transition and explore strategies to overcome them.
• Explore how collaboration across industry peers, value chain partners, and innovation ecosystems can accelerate the transition beyond what any single company can achieve alone.
• Understand how corporate transition strategies can align with Hong Kong’s policy direction, including the Five-Year Plan and the pathway to CAP 2050.

Post-Event Actions:

• Assess your organisation’s current emissions profile and nature impacts to identify the most material areas requiring business model transformation.
• Set or strengthen science-aligned targets for climate and nature, ensuring targets are backed by credible transition plans.
• Develop or refine a transition roadmap with clear milestones, investment requirements, and accountability mechanisms for decarbonising operations and supply chains.
• Explore investment in nature-based solutions, circular economy approaches, and low-carbon technologies relevant to their sector.
• Initiate or deepen engagement with value chain partners and industry peers to drive collective action on shared transition challenges

Hong Kong’s updated Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (BSAP) sets out a bold vision for its biodiversity and sustainable development for the next decade. This session will outline what the new BSAP means for the city’s ambition, its biodiversity, and what it means for business stakeholders. Attendees will gain clarity on how biodiversity goals intersect with climate strategies and how businesses can align with the Government’s priorities to drive meaningful action.

Session Learnings:

• How BSAP and the ambition outlined for Hong Kong will shape stakeholder action in the coming decade
• Existing examples of action from the business sector to drive action forward on biodiversity
• Opportunities for business engagement in biodiversity conservation

Post-Event Actions:

• Aligning corporate strategies with BSAP priorities
• Understand how the private sector can engage with other key stakeholders on nature conservation and biodiversity and contribute to a whole-of-society approach
• Explore partnerships with Government, NGOs and other stakeholders to support nature projects and embed biodiversity into business models

As climate and nature risks intensify, cities and developers are looking beyond concrete alone. Nature-based Solutions (NbS), from restored wetlands to green corridors to living shorelines, offer a powerful complement to traditional drainage, coastal, and slope infrastructure. This session explores how to invest in nature as infrastructure, with a spotlight on Hong Kong as a case study. Learn where NbS are already working, how to evaluate them alongside grey assets using cost-benefit analysis, and how businesses can utilise these solutions to mitigate risk, reduce long-term costs, and build resilience into their operations and developments.

Session Learnings:

•  Investing in nature as infrastructure: Frameworks for evaluating Nature-based Solutions alongside traditional engineered assets
• The Hong Kong lens: Insights on where NbS are already working locally and where opportunities or gaps remain
• Business opportunities in resilience: How companies can utilise NbS to mitigate climate risk and reduce long-term costs
• From assessment to action: Approaches for moving from climate risk analysis to NbS implementation
• Unlocking investment: Pathways for public-private collaboration and financing mechanisms for NbS

Post-Event Actions:

•  Ask yourself whether any of your assets or locations could benefit from a nature-based approach
•  Consider which physical risks (flooding, heat, slope instability) are most relevant to your portfolio
• Explore potential NbS partners such as government bodies, NGOs, or developers
• Think about how you might begin framing a business case for NbS within your organisation

This session moves from ambition to execution showcasing real case studies in Asia on designing and deploying financial products that fund nature and climate resilience. Speakers will use real deal examples in Asia to demonstrate the structuring, pricing, stakeholder engagement and partnerships necessary to make nature bankable. In addition to how the TNFD LEAP framework and available tools can support organisations in integrating nature-related considerations into their business strategy as a first-step.

Session Learnings:

• Understand how nature and resilience transactions are structured in Asia; the financial products and post-trade support needed to make these trades bankable.
• Understand the importance of effective multi-stakeholder coordination, use of concessional capital, and partnerships that reduce risk and unlock funding.
• Understand the frameworks available to translate nature outcomes into credible, measurable metrics that align with financial returns and meet investor expectations.

Post-event Actions:

• Review TNFD’s LEAP framework to understand how to integrate nature into business strategy
• Initiate discussions with potential partners, or stakeholders on TNFD’s LEAP framework, to start reviewing how LEAP can be applied to a project or asset.
• Be an early adopter of TNFD.

Innovation and technology are two of the critical tools we have to tackle both the nature and climate crises. This rapid-fire session will spotlight several start-up solutions across the Asia-Pacific region that are already developing and implementing real, scalable technologies. We will invite speakers to pitch their technological solutions to showcase actionable solutions with relevance to the regional and local Hong Kong context and explore how these solutions can accelerate sustainable outcomes for both climate and nature.

Session Learnings:

• What are some climate and nature tech solutions already in being deployed?
• How are technology companies in the region are approaching climate, food, energy, and biodiversity challenges?
• Potential opportunities for corporates to invest in or pilot solutions, feasibility for scaling and collaboration

Post-Event Actions:

• Building a stronger local climate and nature tech ecosystem in Hong Kong through partnership, piloting or other means
• Integrating scalable solutions into ESG strategy to support climate and biodiversity strategy or targets