The Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission hosted the first in-person meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Taxonomy Board in 2026 and an accompanying Mitigation co-benefit and Adaptation for Resilience (mARs) Guide workshop at its headquarters in Makati City, positioning the sessions as part of its chairship of the ASEAN Capital Markets Forum (ACMF) and its sustainable and adaptation finance priorities. Discussion at the Taxonomy Board meeting covered progress on initiatives supporting the ASEAN Taxonomy for Sustainable Finance, including accelerating implementation and adoption of Version 4, developing the mARs Guide, and strengthening the region’s sustainable finance ecosystem through stakeholder engagement and capacity-building. The mARs Guide aims to accelerate investments that strengthen ASEAN’s resilience to climate-related risks such as floods, droughts, and extreme heat; a 2025 ACMF-led whitepaper set out key principles and methodological approaches for the guide. The workshop addressed the guide’s governance structure, its conceptual approach, and proposed enhancements for subsequent phases. The SEC linked the activities to its ACMF chairship programme for 2026 and the ACMF Action Plan 2026 to 2030, and pointed to further planned outputs under the “Sustainable and Resilient Capital Markets” deliverable, including an ASEAN Code of Conduct for External Verifiers in Sustainable Finance, an expanded ASEAN Corporate Governance Scorecard regional assessment, and completion of the next phase of the mARs Guide.

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