Here’s a number that should bug you. Farms and food systems make up 54% of the costed adaptation needs in developing countries’ national climate plans. Yet they get only about 20% of global adaptation finance. So the sector that feeds everyone is mostly left to fend for itself.
On Tuesday, at the COP31 climate talks in Antalya, Singapore tried to change that. It launched SPIRE Asia, a programme designed to pull private money into climate-proofing Southeast Asia’s farms and food chains. The headline piece is a blended finance fund with a target of up to US$500 million. Let’s unpack what that means, and why we think you should keep an eye on it.
So what is SPIRE Asia, exactly?
SPIRE Asia stands for Scaling Projects and Investments for Resilience in Asia. Yes, someone clearly had fun with that acronym. Grace Fu, Singapore’s Minister for Sustainability and the Environment, announced it on November 10. Then Ravi Menon, the country’s Ambassador for Climate Action, presented it in Antalya.
Three government bodies built it together: the National Climate Change Secretariat, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and Enterprise Singapore. They also brought in Temasek Trust, the philanthropic arm of Temasek Holdings. A steering committee of all four, chaired by Menon, keeps the moving parts in sync.
So what are those moving parts? There are three, and they work a bit like a relay race:
- A data platform. It pulls climate, farm and investment data into one place, so people can spot risks and opportunities. It also includes a new Solutions Centre for Regional Smallholder Farmers.
- A market development facility. Temasek Trust leads this part. It turns small, scattered farm ideas into projects an investor can actually buy into.
- A blended finance fund. This is the money bit, with a target of up to US$500 million for adaptation across the agri-food value chain.
You can read the full details in the official MAS announcement.
Why do farms keep getting skipped?
Here’s the thing about climate money. Most of the attention goes to cutting emissions, with things like solar parks and electric buses. Adaptation, which means preparing for the heat, floods and droughts that are already coming, gets far less.
Asia feels this gap hard. According to figures reported by TNGlobal, the region needs up to $400 billion a year for adaptation. Actual flows? About $34 billion, going by 2021 and 2022 data. In other words, the money covers only a small slice of the need. We’ve looked at the state of adaptation finance before, and that gap hasn’t gone away.
Then there’s food. Agri-food systems carry 54% of the costed needs we mentioned up top. But they receive just 20% of the money. Menon put it bluntly: “Relative to its needs, Asia is the most underserved by adaptation finance.”
Why does this keep happening? Farm projects tend to be too small, too early-stage or too short on data for a bank to touch. A smallholder dealing with a shifting monsoon doesn’t come with a neat spreadsheet. So lenders walk away, even when the need is obvious.
Singapore has a personal stake here, too. It imports more than 90% of its food. As Menon said, “regional food resilience is part of our own food security.”
How the SPIRE Asia fund is supposed to work
Let’s talk about that US$500 million fund, because “blended finance” sounds fancier than it is.
Blended finance simply means mixing two kinds of money. First comes catalytic capital, usually from governments or philanthropies, which agrees to take on certain risks. Then commercial investors join, since the deal now looks safer. In other words, the patient money goes in first so the cautious money will follow.
That’s the plan here. The fund will use catalytic capital to absorb specific risks and improve the risk-return picture for commercial lenders. It’ll target climate adaptation across the agri-food value chain, while the other two pillars feed it a pipeline of deals.
Honestly, those other pillars matter just as much. A fund can’t invest in projects that don’t exist yet. That’s why the market development facility bundles small farm-level projects into investment-ready portfolios. Meanwhile, the data platform tries to kill the “we can’t measure the risk” excuse.
Before launching, the team held consultations with more than 60 participants, including development banks, investors, philanthropies and agribusinesses. They kept hearing about the same three gaps: data, projects and financing. SPIRE Asia basically gives each gap its own pillar. We like that logic a lot.
Okay, but what’s still missing?
Here’s where we put the party hats down for a second. The fund is still a proposal. Abigail Ng, the chief sustainability officer at MAS, called it a “proposed” fund in a speech on November 11. She also said MAS welcomes “potential catalytic capital providers, technical partners, and fund managers.” Translation: they’re still looking for backers.
There’s no close date, no list of investees and no timeline yet. So $500 million is a target, not a cheque in the bank.
Measurement is the other headache. Ng admitted that resilience outcomes are “context-specific and harder to assess.” She also said, “There is no common language for resilience investments.” That matters, because impact investors want proof, and the impact investing market runs on numbers. A solar plant can report tonnes of carbon avoided. But how do you measure a drought that didn’t wreck a harvest?
Still, we’d rather see a government admit the hard part than pretend it’s solved. The data platform also looks like a direct attempt to chip away at exactly this problem.
What SPIRE Asia means for the rest of us
You might be thinking: nice for Southeast Asia, but what about us? Fair question. Armenia isn’t part of the programme, so nobody’s sending a cheque to farmers in the Ararat Valley.
But the model travels well. Lots of emerging markets wrestle with the same mix: small farms, rising heat, patchy data and banks that won’t lend. If you work on agriculture or climate in Armenia, that list probably sounds familiar. Singapore is testing whether you can fix it with three tools at once, instead of throwing money at it and hoping.
The timing matters as well. Rich countries are already wary of fresh public pledges, as we saw when the EU said “no new money” for COP31. So any scheme that pulls private capital into adaptation deserves a close look.
Here’s our takeaway. Adaptation is where climate finance gets real for ordinary people, because it decides whether the harvest survives. If SPIRE Asia can prove that private money will back farm resilience, other regions could copy the playbook. And if it can’t raise the full $500 million? That’ll tell us something too. As Ng put it, “Deployment is where impact starts.” We’ll be watching how fast this fund goes from proposal to actual deals.