Queer and Fighting for Climate Justice in Southeast Asia

In September 2023, Aidil Iman Aidid, a Malaysian youth activist, was invited by a group of students at a university in Kuala Lumpur to give a speech on his climate justice advocacy.

But just a few days before the event, Aidid’s invitation was revoked. The students who initially invited him explained that the rejection was due to his parallel activism in queer rights.

“I did not protest,” says Aidid. “It was not the students who were to blame, but rather their supervisors who made the decision.”

According to Aidid, the students attempted to negotiate with school leaders to no avail. The 24-year-old is no stranger to deliberate exclusion from climate events because of his gay identity.

Of the almost 700 million people in Southeast Asia, marginalized groups are disproportionately impacted by climate change, including those who are LGBTQIA+.

With its densely populated areas, coastal zones, and heavy reliance on natural resources, Southeast Asia is one of the most vulnerable areas to climate change, and extreme weather events are markedly increasing in the region. In particular, Myanmar, the Philippines, and Thailand were ranked number two, four, and nine, respectively, on the Global Climate Risk Index from 2000 to 2019 by Germanwatch, a nonprofit based in Bonn, Germany. Risk levels are based on countries’ climate fatalities and economic losses.

“Those who are least responsible for climate change are the ones who will bear the brunt.”

Despite the compounded risk of marginalized groups in this region, LGBTQIA+ people have faced more challenges in their activism and dangers because of it, and are often not included in broader discussions on climate solutions.

Gender Inequality and Climate

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change now recognizes that gender inequality is one of the contextual conditions that compound vulnerability to climate change.

Beatriz Quintos, a researcher on gender and climate in the Philippines, notes that this recognition is a positive development. But one of the drawbacks lies in the “simplification of the complex experiences of women, men, or other sexual minorities of climate change as a phenomenon.”

“If you’re underprivileged, uneducated, or living as an informal settler—especially in places like the Philippines, which is one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world—climate change worsens the existing crises you must deal with day-to-day,” Quintos says. “It is a bit like that Michelle Yeoh movie, Everything Everywhere All at Once—climate emergency edition. And the thing is, those who are least responsible for climate change are the ones who will bear the brunt.”

Regionally, Southeast Asian countries have expressed commitment to gender equality through documents. These documents include the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community Blueprint 2025, ASEAN Community Vision 2025, and the 2021 ASEAN Declaration on the Gender-Responsive Implementation of the ASEAN Community Vision 2025 and Sustainable Development Goals adopted in 2017. However, while these documents emphasize gender equality and the inclusion of women, they do not mention sexual and gender minorities.

Red [name changed for safety reasons], a climate advocate from Thailand—one of the more queer-friendly countries in the region—currently works at an international organization. He says his team has overseen programs often limited to the inclusion of more women only while neglecting queer people. Red does not feel comfortable coming out in his workplace, though he admitted that he was lucky to be in an environment where hostility against queer people is forbidden.

“Working with macho straight men, I feel that they are nervous about interacting with LGBTQIA+ people,” says Red. For example, men at his workplace complain about nonbinary people preferring the pronoun “them.”

Lacking Protection in an Openly Hostile Environment

Southeast Asia has witnessed some optimistic changes in recent years. In 2024, Thailand became the first country in the region to legalize same-sex marriage. In 2022, Singapore repealed a law that criminalized sex between men. And in 2019, Vietnam established its first healthcare clinic specifically welcoming to the LGBTQIA+ community.

Yet many countries in the region not only lack legal protections for queer people but have openly anti-LGBTQIA+ policies. In Muslim-majority countries, such as Brunei, Malaysia, and Indonesia, Islamic sharia laws criminalize same-sex relationships. In parts of Southeast Asia where queer people are not criminalized, they still face varying degrees of discrimination.

Religious aid organizations also tend to divide shelters by sex assigned at birth.

Religion—be it Christianity (Singapore, the Philippines, Timor Leste), Buddhism (Thailand, Myanmar), or Islam (Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia)—has played a considerable role in the exclusion of non-heterosexual communities from equal participation in combating climate change.

For example, many aid organizations and agencies are religiously affiliated and do not accept trans people. Aidid has heard anecdotal reports that during floods, self-identified trans people do not receive relief assistance and are isolated. Religious aid organizations also tend to divide shelters by sex assigned at birth.

“[Trans people] do not go there for fear of rejection. Instead, they tend to find support within their own communities,” according to Aidid, who notes that “anti-LGBT+ attitude is included in religious teaching.”

Aidid and Red both feel it would be hard to come out publicly while working in the government sector. In addition, being out can be a disadvantage when applying for other jobs in political parties, government foundations, and local companies.

In the past, Aidid’s independent research proposal on LGBTQIA+ people and floods was rejected without any justification at his public university. He believes the rejection was due to his supervisor wanting to avoid controversial research topics.

Queer issues remain politically contentious in Malaysia, where the mainstream political parties have weaponized queerness, and trans people do not have access to formal education or government spaces. Advocacy for recognizing the third gender by Islamic scholars in Malaysia at the National Human Rights Commission has not borne fruit so far.

And online homophobic remarks against queer climate activists, which Aidid has experienced firsthand, have gone unpunished “out of ignorance and indifference.”

Connecting Climate Change and Gender

“Many environmentalists do not care about LGBTQIA+, though they might care about women, children, poor people,” Aidid says. “They do not see LGBTQIA+ as allies or colleagues. They do not see the environment[al] issues as multidisciplinary.”

Dr. Rowalt Alibudbud, a lecturer at De La Salle University, has stressed the need for disaster responders to begin to recognize this population, including by using gender-affirming language and recognizing LGBTQIA+ individuals and couples in housing and food support during climate-related events.

He has seen some recent positive interactions with typhoon responders: “Several public and private institutions, as well as higher educational institutions, actually encouraged people to use names that affirm their gender identity,” Alibudbud recounts. “Some even let them indicate their self-determined gender identity, aside from their chosen names.”

And he remains proud and upbeat about his queer identity. Whenever self-doubtful and discouraged, Aidid says he finds solace within his LGBTQIA+ communities. “I am quite privileged because I have received support from so many people,” he says. “Whenever I am rejected, I find another opportunity.”

Quintos emphasizes the importance of allowing people agency: “What gets emphasized is that they are vulnerable to climate change, and they are cast as victims of the climate crisis, which is not the full picture. People have agency. If they have the right resources, they can advocate for themselves.”