Sustainability | Hezri Adnan

Money Does Grow on Trees

More than half of what Malaysia’s commercial banks lend depends on nature. Why, then, does so little of that money ever reach it? A study released in June 2026 by Bank Negara Malaysia, the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme put the share at 54%, concentrated in sectors that need clean water and fertile soil. Savers are exposed too. The Employees Provident Fund (EPF) manages RM1.54 trillion and keeps 61% of it at home. Much of that sits in Malaysian securi

Dr Hezri Adnan

Oct 13

Can Banks Read a Forest?

Why Nature Finance Needs Ecological Judgment In 2022, Bank Negara Malaysia and the World Bank published An Exploration of Nature-Related Financial Risks in Malaysia, which I will call the NRFR report. It was an act of translation. It carried forests, water, soil and biodiversity into the language bankers use for credit exposure and transition risk. It was an important piece of work. Without that translation, nature stays outside the room where capital is allocated. Yet transl

Dr Hezri Adnan

Oct 11

The Ecological Meaning of Merdeka

Every 31 August, the flags go up and Malaysia remembers the day the rakyat took back the right to rule themselves. In 1957, a people once governed from London began to shape their homeland’s future. The Constitution of the Federation of Malaya gave that self-rule durable form through citizenship, personal liberty, elected institutions and divided powers. Six years later, the Malaysia Act 1963 reshaped the constitutional order for a larger federation. Read them again today,

Dr Hezri Adnan

Aug 30

When insurance becomes infrastructure

The article argues that climate risk is turning insurance and takaful into a form of climate infrastructure, not merely a mechanism for paying claims after disasters. Starting with El Niño, it notes that while the cycle is natural, a warmer planet intensifies its effects on water supply, agriculture, electricity demand and floods. Globally, insurance is being reinvented through four innovations: parametric and index-based products that pay quickly when thresholds are crossed;

Dr Hezri Adnan

Jun 25

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A practitioner who writes

Hezri Adnan is Senior Adviser on Sustainable Development at UNDP Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei Darussalam, and Managing Director of Choras Advisory. He is a Trustee of WWF Malaysia.

He was CEO of the Langkawi Development Authority and Executive Director of the Malaysian Institute of Economic Research. At Bursa Malaysia he led group sustainability. From 2015 to 2018 he served on the UN International Resource Panel.

His essays treat sustainability as a domain of public policy. Recurring themes include nature risk, climate change, the resource nexus and sustainable finance. He is the author of The Sustainability Shift: Refashioning Malaysia's Future (2016). He holds a PhD in public policy from the Australian National University and is a Fellow of the Academy of Sciences Malaysia.