Artwork by Erik (IG: @wetpaint_dreams)
A Manifesto of LGBTQIA+ Communities Across Southeast Asia
We are LGBTQIA+ organizations, communities, and allies from Southeast Asia. This manifesto is both a call to action and a declaration of existence. It situates queer communities as central actors in addressing the most urgent existential challenge of our time — the climate crisis. We believe our voices must be heard and our realities recognized in the fight for climate justice.
Southeast Asia is already bearing the brunt of the climate crisis, with stronger typhoons, heavier floods, rising sea levels, and haze pollution affecting millions. Rising ocean temperatures and extreme weather patterns signal a dangerous tipping point — calling for urgent, collective, and decisive action.
As the climate crisis intensifies, marginalized communities, including LGBTQIA+ people, face even greater risks of displacement, harassment, and discrimination. Yet too often, our struggles and contributions remain invisible in climate policies and actions. Our experiences, knowledge, and leadership are vital to building just and sustainable solutions, but they are rarely recognized.
We call for recognition, action, and accountability to ensure that queer voices shape climate solutions in Southeast Asia and beyond. We stand for a future where climate justice is queer justice.
We value inclusivity. We believe that everyone has the right to live in a safe, clean, and healthy environment, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, or expression. We affirm our right to belong: in our families, our communities, and our societies.
We value collaboration. As people of diverse SOGIESC, we bring varied perspectives, experiences, and ideas to build a just, sustainable, and caring world.
We value care for the environment. We believe nature’s resources must be protected and shared equitably so that all people and communities can thrive.
We believe in collective care because by looking after one another and our planet, we ensure that no one is left behind.
Climate disasters affect everyone, but they do not affect everyone equally. LGBTQIA+ people across Southeast Asia face multiple and intersecting risks during crises, yet our struggles are often ignored.
In evacuation and aid camps, segregation and discrimination mean queer communities receive less assistance and limited access to health services. Trans people are denied recognition of their gender, excluded from relief goods and safe shelters. Same-sex couples are refused recognition as families and denied essential services. In many evacuation areas, LGBTQIA+ individuals face heightened risks of violence and sexual harassment.
These injustices are not isolated incidents; they are the result of systems rooted in conservatism, patriarchy, and inequality. The climate crisis exposes and deepens these injustices. This is climate injustice, when those already marginalized are pushed even deeper into vulnerability, denied protection, dignity, and the right to exist safely.
In spite of these injustices, we remain resilient. We have turned our struggles into strength and our pain into leadership. We fight not only for ourselves, but to ensure that others will not endure the same. Together, we have built communities that protect, nurture, and care for one another. Our solidarity gives us strength, and with that strength, we look ahead. We know that another world is possible: one built on justice, care, and equality.
We envision a world where LGBTQIA+ people are fully recognized and included in the climate movement, where there are no barriers to our participation, leadership, and decision-making.
We call for genuine inclusion, not token representation. Our presence in climate spaces must go beyond visibility; we must be part of planning, contributing to, and implementing real solutions that transform systems of injustice.
We dream of a future where corporations are held accountable for the destruction and pollution they have inflicted on our planet and communities. Climate action must protect people, not profit. Policies must serve the most vulnerable, not the most powerful.
Our vision is one of justice, equality, and shared responsibility, where every person and every community can live in dignity and safety.
To turn this vision into reality, we commit to collective action, and we demand accountability from those in power.
We commit to an intersectional approach to the climate movement, one that recognizes our diverse experiences and ensures that all voices, across sexual orientations, gender identities, and expressions, are heard in shaping solutions.
We commit to nurturing care and resilience within our communities. Through collective support, mutual aid, and solidarity, we will strengthen our capacity to respond to the climate crisis together.
We commit to regional solidarity. Climate impacts are borderless, and so is our resistance. We will come together as LGBTQIA+ communities across Southeast Asia to share knowledge, amplify voices, and strengthen movements for justice and care.
We affirm the ASEAN Declaration on the Right to a Clean, Healthy, and Sustainable Environment as a step toward regional environmental justice, and urge Member States to implement it with explicit attention to sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sex characteristics (SOGIESC). ASEAN and LGBTQIA+ communities must work together in a context of safety, mutual respect, and empowerment, ensuring that marginalized societies are supported to lead and take meaningful climate action.
We demand that governments and corporations take responsibility for the destruction they have caused, for exploiting people and nature, for displacing communities, and for profiting from the crisis.
We demand the transformation of systems that prioritize profit over people, including the capitalist, patriarchal, and extractive structures that exploit both people and the planet. Climate justice must be a diversity movement, one that celebrates diversity and dismantles systems of oppression, one that includes LGBTQIA+ communities and centers the voices of those most affected.
We demand inclusive climate action, people-centered policies and transparent, participatory climate governance, where data, financing, and decision-making are open to public and community oversight, including LGBTQIA+ groups. Climate finance, disaster response, and adaptation programs must prioritize marginalized communities, ensuring that LGBTQIA+ people are not left behind and that corporations and elites are held accountable.
We demand representation and participation. LGBTQIA+ people must be included in decision-making spaces at all levels, not as tokens, but as leaders, researchers, and rights-holders shaping just and sustainable futures.
Climate justice cannot exist if LGBTQIA+ communities are excluded.
Climate justice is a human right, and it must be community-centered.
The climate crisis is not a problem for the future; it is happening now, and it affects us all.
Our fight is not only for the future, it is for our lives, our dignity, and our communities today.
We stand together, resilient and united, to demand recognition, inclusion, and action.
We will not be left behind.
This is not only a statement — it is a living commitment. We will continue to build alliances, reclaim spaces, and demand a future where climate justice is inseparable from queer justice.
Across Southeast Asia, our solidarity is our strength, our voices, our leadership, and our communities must shape the solutions to the climate crisis, now and for generations to come.
This manifesto was developed through the collective insights, experiences, and visions of LGBTQIA+ advocates, activists, and community members from across Southeast Asia who continue to lead the fight for justice, equality, and sustainability. Their voices and lived realities guided every word of this document.
Join us in advancing queer-inclusive climate action across Southeast Asia. By signing the Queer Climate Justice Manifesto, you add your voice to a growing regional movement demanding policies that protect and uplift those most affected by the climate crisis, including LGBTQIA+ communities and allies. Your support strengthens our collective call for safety, dignity, and meaningful participation in climate decision-making. Sign the manifesto here and stand with us for a just and inclusive future.
The sign-up is open until November 30.
