Beyond Lip Service: Co-producing knowledge and action with marginal urban communities under climate change

Overview

On the 25th February 2026,  NatCen and its partners hosted a flagship event showcasing community-led approaches to addressing intersecting climate risks in Asia, including heat, flooding and air pollution, and their consequences for health and urban inequality. The event ran in parallel with the UNESCAP Asia-Pacific Forum on Sustainable Development 2026, and was chaired by Dr Anh Vu, the PI of the Wellcome-funded project ‘The Health Impacts of Climate Change on precarious outdoor workers in urban Vietnam’.

Speakers and participating organisations

Speakers presented research and case studies from across Asia:

• Phoebe Weston-Stanley, The National Centre for Social Research  (NatCen, UK) – “Intersectional vulnerabilities and climate-related health risks among informal outdoor workers in urban Vietnam: Survey-based insights.”
• Dr Manlika Sukitpaneenit, Chulalongkorn University (Thailand) – “Assessment of PM2.5 Exposure and Respiratory Symptoms among Primary School Children in Roadside Urban Environments, Bangkok, Thailand.”
• Eva Yeung, The Hong Kong Red Cross – “The Scorching Reality: Heat Stress and Humanity.”
• Prof. Jonathan Rigg, the University of Bristol – “‘This is what climate change feels like’: Reflecting on vulnerabilities from below.”
• Uyen Pham, Social Life Research Institute (Viet Nam) – “Rethinking Mental Health Measurement for Precarious Workers: Evidence from Co-Produced Data.”
• Dr Giang Thu Nguyen,  Institute for Development and Community Health-LIGHT (Viet Nam) – “Who Is Seen, Who Is Protected? Policy Visibility and Climate Resilience among Informal Outdoor Workers.”
• Zia Rehman, Asia Development Alliance – “Climate, Livelihoods & Labour Rights: Strengthening Resilience of Women Agricultural Workers in Pakistan”.

Key questions explored

The session explored the following key questions:

• How do climate change impacts shape the health and wellbeing of precarious urban outdoor workers and other vulnerable populations in Asian cities?  
• What lessons can be learned from community-led adaptations by women agricultural workers, outdoor labourers, and other marginalised groups in sustaining livelihoods and protecting rights?  
• How can inclusive partnerships among governments, academia, and civil society strengthen health resilience, disaster risk reduction, and social protection in contexts of urban inequality? 

Aims and focus

The event aimed to inform, empower, and support Asia-Pacific countries, particularly least developed countries, landlocked developing countries, and small island developing States, in advancing the 2030 Agenda and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The session achieved this by paying particular attention to informal and precarious workers and under-served urban groups in Viet Nam, Thailand, Hong Kong and Pakistan, identifying regional trends and sharing best practices and lessons learned. 

Key messages

Across the presentations a key message became clear: communities are not only experiencing the impacts of climate change, but interpreting them, responding to them and generating knowledge. The most meaningful insights to climate change adaptation therefore come from the ground up, reflecting that experiences of individuals are impacted by local contexts and overlapping vulnerabilities. 

Implications for policy and practice

Speakers identified several actionable priorities:

• Treat communities as knowledge partners. Marginalised groups must be recognised as co-producers of evidence, not just consultation subjects.  Cross-sector partnerships should be institutionalised to translate community evidence into action and track equity impacts.
• Strengthen inclusive, rights-based partnerships across sectors. Governments, civil society, and academic institutions should deepen collaboration to ensure policies are evidence‑informed, climate‑adaptive, and socially protective, reflecting the lived realities of vulnerable communities and improve accountability, equity, and coordinated action. 
• Embed protection in climate adaptation frameworks. Vulnerable populations including informal workers, female migrant workers, children, the elderly, and those in inadequate housing need explicit visibility in policy design. 
• Reduce exposure hotspots through targeted urban action. This includes anticipatory measures for extreme heat (community cooling centres, financial support for air-conditioning in inadequate housing) and pollution controls (limiting local emission sources and establishing health monitoring programs for high-risk children). 

The event demonstrated that accelerating SDG delivery in the Asia-Pacific requires moving beyond ‘consultation’ to genuine co‑production with communities living the impacts of heat, flooding and pollution. The discussion connected practice and evidence from Viet Nam, Hong Kong, Thailand and Pakistan to show how locally grounded knowledge can be converted into concrete policy levers. 

Next steps

Following the success of the event, NatCen and its partners will focus on turning the event’s shared learning into usable products and partnerships by continuing to engage regional and national stakeholders to embed community evidence in climate change adaptation and mitigation.

Event recording

A recording of the event is available to watch here.