The Philippines now chairs the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean). At the 2026 leaders’ meeting, the communiqué landed with the usual diplomatic grace.
After the most recent Asean summit, leaders declared, once again, the urgent need to collaborate on food security. The sentiment was correct. But the wording felt like a ghost from summits past.
Every few years, when a dry spell scorches the Mekong or a conflict in the Black Sea chokes wheat shipments, Asean remembers that hunger is a geopolitical weapon. But there is another, equally lethal vulnerability sitting in plain sight: energy.
This became evident during the recent Strait of Hormuz fracas.
The region cannot talk seriously about food without talking about fuel. Fertiliser prices track natural gas costs. Tractor diesel, cold-storage electricity and transport fuel are the hidden ingredients in every bowl of rice. When global energy supplies wobble, food shelves go bare weeks later.
Asean has learned this lesson twice in five years: first during the post-Covid-19 supply shock, then again after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
So here is the hard truth: sectoral, siloed responses will fail. The region needs a permanent, dedicated Asean Centre for Energy and Food Studies (ACEFS) – not a ceremonial institute, but a working policy engine.
Why a centre and not another statement?
National stockpiles and emergency coordination are essential, but they are reactive. What Asean lacks is a pre-competitive, region-wide platform that models the food-energy nexus.
An agency that can answer questions such as: If gas prices rise by 30 per cent, how many tonnes of rice will be lost? If Indonesia diverts palm oil to biodiesel, what happens to Malaysia’s cooking oil prices?
Today, each country guards its data. Research is duplicated. Policy instruments are national, not regional.
A centre would change this by doing two things:
- Policy instruments – Develop Asean-wide guidelines on strategic reserves that link energy and food, such as shared biofuel feedstock protocols and cross-border electricity arrangements for cold chains.
- Research – Publish open, real-time models of supply-chain risks, from extreme weather events to maritime chokepoints such as the Straits of Melaka.
How can it be built without bureaucratic paralysis?
Asean’s greatest strength – consensus – is also its slowest gear. As such, the centre cannot become another top-down Jakarta-based secretariat.
Here is a practical three-step path:
First, start lean. Not with a marble headquarters, but with a virtual secretariat hosted by an existing institution, such as the Indonesia-based Asean Centre for Energy or the Malaysia-led Asean Food Security Information System. Their mandates could be aligned through a joint memorandum, with a rotating executive director. The budget would be minimal and drawn from unspent technical cooperation funds.
Second, co-opt the private sector. Invite the region’s agribusiness and energy firms – think Wilmar, Petronas, ThaiBev and Sembcorp – to fund and sit on a research advisory board.
Why? They already manage the food-energy nexus daily. Their models are often more sophisticated than government forecasts. In exchange for a seat at the table, they could share anonymised data. Pragmatic, not purist.
Third, produce a single watchlist product. Within six months, the centre should launch a monthly Energy-Food Stress Index, providing green, yellow and red risk levels for each Asean member state based on LNG spot prices, rice inventory days, rainfall anomalies and diesel subsidies.
Simple. Visual. Actionable. Leaders cannot ignore a red flag.
What is the risk of doing nothing?
We have already seen the alternative. In 2022, Myanmar’s fertiliser shortages worsened food insecurity even before the cyclone struck. The Philippines experienced transport strikes over fuel costs, delaying vegetable deliveries. Thailand and Vietnam, both major rice exporters, briefly considered export bans, undermining regional trust.
An energy shock is a food shock. A food shock is a political shock.
Asean’s centrality in global affairs means little if its own people face empty markets.
The centre being proposed is not a cure-all. It will not stop droughts or wars. But it would give the region something it currently lacks: a shared, evidence-based dashboard and a toolbox designed for both fuels and fields.
Asean leaders were right at their last meeting to call for food security cooperation. Now they need the courage to add “energy” to the title and “funding” to the footnote.
Build the centre. The next disruption is already on its way, and it will not wait for another communiqué.
The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the writer and do not represent that of Twentytwo13.
