At the 46th Summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) last May, leaders adopted what appears to be a landmark document, the Kuala Lumpur Declaration on Asean 2045: Our Shared Future. The declaration sets a 20-year roadmap to transform Asean into “a resilient, innovative, dynamic, and people-centered community.” It further emphasizes “regional solidarity, shared identity, and inclusive development, aligning with global sustainability and equity goals.” 

But it is doubtful whether the 20-year timeline provides Asean with enough time to realize its goals because the same hurdles and hindrances that have worked against regional integration and other lofty objectives since 1992 would be difficult, if not impossible, to overcome. The Roadmap’s language is set in broad terms under a vision that is too abstract for practical use. The political will and institutional capacity of member-states are highly divergent across the region, making unified actions an insurmountable challenge. 

That Asean continues to be stubbornly welded into its “non-interference” principle will surely continue to hinder collective action, particularly on human rights issues and democratic backsliding, among others. Enforcement mechanisms for security cooperation are also not in place. While the economic plan envisions Asean to be the world’s fourth largest economy with emphasis on digital transformation, there are no clear-cut solutions for the widening economic disparities and inequalities among member-economies. The goal of a single currency appears to have been permanently abandoned. Infrastructure gaps and fragmented regulatory mechanisms compound the problem.

While Asean 2045 promotes human rights, health, social justice, participatory governance, and gender equality alongside youth empowerment and cultural preservation, the absence of enforcement mechanisms risks turning these goals into mere tokenism that look good only on paper. Member-states are expected to have different and conflicting interpretations on the meanings of these goals, something that Asean has long allowed for national idiosyncrasies given the cacophony of political systems in the region.

The Connectivity Strategic Plan and institutional reforms place Asean within the 21st century development of digital ecosystems and their accompanying infrastructures. This ties in with the expansion of data centers, rising data consumption, a growing demand for cloud computing, the adoption of AI, and surging internet usage in Southeast Asia where there are an estimated 125,000 new internet users daily. Not surprisingly, it is the advanced economies of Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia that are leading this digital connectivity push. 

Still, the main challenge lies in inadequate education and training for highly skilled AI workers, lack of career awareness, and insufficient infrastructure. In addition, from an environmental view, data centers are energy-power hungry and generate high levels of heat and humidity requiring extensive cooling systems. AI, therefore adds to a country’s carbon footprint that could lead to hastened wildfires, floodings, and extreme weather that typically characterize climate change.  

Nikkei Asia reports: “Experts are increasingly underlining the climate risks, such as massive energy and water needs, growing emissions and electronic waste, that come with training and deploying exponentially larger AI models. … Typing a query into OpenAI’s ChatGPT might not seem like an energy-intensive activity. Some 200 million people around the world carry out that process every month. But just one such query could consume between 50 and 90 times more electricity than a traditional Google search.”

From a broader view, however, the goals set in Asean 2045 appear to be no more than a cynical rehash and a not-so-clever recycling of previous declarations and agreements arrived at by the regional grouping’s leaders. Economic integration has long been a declared goal since 1992 when the Asean Free Trade Area was created. The Asean Vision 2020 was adopted in 1997, envisaging “a highly competitive region with free flow of goods, services, investments, a freer flow of capital, equitable economic development and reduced poverty and socioeconomic disparities.” 

The Declaration of Asean Concord II in 2003 targeted the establishment of the Asean Economic Community (AEC) with three pillars—political security, economic, and sociocultural. In 2007, the AEC Blueprint 2015 was immediately followed by the AEC Blueprint 2025 “to further deepen economic integration…” But the track record of intra-Asean trade and intra-Asean foreign investments over the past decades enfeeble Asean 2045’s lofty objectives. 

Intra-Asean trade has been virtually stagnant, averaging a mere 24.1% of total trade from 2014 to 2023 (See Table 1). During this 10-year period, intra-Asean trade totaled US$6.7 billion compared with total trade at $27.7 billion. This can be mainly attributed to the lack of complementarity among Asean economies, i.e., they compete with each other in terms of export goods. 

In a 2014 opinion commentary, I wrote: “Of 15 major Asean export commodities, it is only in rice, coffee and palm/coconut oils that three to four Asean countries trade in. The rest of the export product lines have more than half of Asean countries engaging in trading activities. All Asean, economies trade in wood and wood products and in textiles/clothing while nine of the 10 countries are in beverages, machinery/equipment, and fish and fish products. Eight Asean countries are engaged in exporting chemicals, metal and metal products, travel goods/bags, and fruits/vegetables. Seven Asean economies export oil and oil products while six are in the trading of food and live animals.

Moreover, the intra-trade figure is misleading because, for the region’s No. 1 trading nation, Singapore, from 30% to 40% of its intra-Asean exports are actually re-exports which originate from non-Asean economies. These consist of electronics and integrated circuits, machinery and equipment, petroleum and chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and consumer goods. If this data is factored in, total intra-Asean trade would be much smaller. 

Despite a market size of $2.3 trillion and almost 700 million people, Asean’s aim for a single market continues to be stymied by non-tariff barriers (NTBs), regulatory differences, and protectionism. NTBs include import bans, bureaucratic import requirements, subsidies, quotas, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, technical trade barriers, state aid measures, export taxes, and public procurement requirements. Trade disputes between member-countries have been likewise reported. 

Gross inequalities are evident in the distribution of intra-Asean exports. Singapore alone corners 32.9% of the market (See Table 2). In any case, 86% of intra-Asean trade is controlled by only four economies—Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. The remaining six have only a 14% share. The last four—Myanmar, Brunei, Cambodia and Lao PDR—have a minuscule 3.4% share. 

Intra-Asean foreign direct investment (FDI) flows have an even poorer record. From 2014 to 2023, intra-Asean FDI averaged a measly 14.7% of total FDI into the region (See Table 3). Within this period, intra-Asean investments totaled $239 billion compared to total FDI of $1.6 trillion. The highest level was 23.3% in 2016 and the lowest point was in 2023, when FDI flows reached a dismal 9.6%. Intra-Asean FDI flows remain insignificant due to market fragmentation, competition overriding complementarity, regulatory hurdles, and the dominance of global transnational corporations. 

The annual Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index 2024 notes that four Southeast Asian states were classified as “authoritarian”—Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam. Six others—Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Timor Leste—were classified as “flawed democracies.” Public debt sustainability haunts the region with six countries—Singapore, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines—registering debt-to-GDP ratios that have reached or crossed the 60% debt threshold. 

Social inequalities continue to worsen, with Southeast Asians classified as poor or with low incomes constituting 45% of total regional population while the rich and upper-income individuals share a mere 9%. As of 2023, the average progress in achieving the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals has been a dismal 17%, way off the track to meet the 2030 deadline. Continued reliance on fossil fuels, deforestation, and anarchic urbanization are major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. 

Overall, the Asean 2045 roadmap’s success will depend on concrete implementation plans and measurable outcomes, bridging development gaps and ensuring equitable participation between member-countries and navigating the geopolitical pressures currently confronting the region. More important is the political will to dismantle counterproductive and self-serving principles set during Asean’s founding years. All these constitute a tall order for an organization that has been chasing after the elusive goal of regional integration for 33 years. 

References:

ARC Group. 2024. “Data centers in Southeast Asia: expansion and opportunities amid rising AI adoption.” July 4. https://arc-group.com/southeast-asia-data-center-opportunities/ 

Asean Investment Report 2024–Asean Economic Community 2025 and Foreign Direct Investment Jakarta: Asean Secretariat, October 2024.

Association of Southeast Asian Nations. 2025. “Kuala Lumpur Declaration on Asean 2045: Our Shared Future.” May. https://asean.org/book/asean-2045-our-shared-future/

Mao Kato. 2025. “Vietnam takes bite out of Philippine bananas’ market share in Japan.” Nikkei Asia. August 9. https://asia.nikkei.com/business/food-beverage/vietnam-takes-bite-out-of-philippine-bananas-market-share-in-japan

Shaun Narine. 2009. “ASEAN in the twenty-first century: a sceptical review.” Cambridge Review of International Affairs. Vol. 22 No. 3. September. 

Rafa Sukoco. 2024. “Intra-ASEAN total exports, 2023.” SEASIA: Good News from Southeast Asia.” November 6. https://seasia.co/infographic/intra-asean-total-exports-2023

Eduardo C. Tadem. 2014. “Asean’s elusive integration.” Philippine Daily Inquirer. Talk of the Town section. May 4. 

Yifan Yu. 2024. “AI’s looming climate cost: Energy demand surges amid data center race.” Nikkei Asia. June 12. https://asia.nikkei.com/spotlight/the-big-story/ai-s-looming-climate-cost-energy-demand-surges-amid-data-center-race.

This piece is extracted and revised from Eduardo C. Tadem. 2025. “Introduction: As Southeast Asia flounders, the search for alternatives becomes imperative” in soon to be published Volume 3 of Alternative Practices Across Southeast Asia. Program on Alternative Development, UP Center for Integrative and Development Studies.