“What really inspired me was not a particular moment, but a relationship that was rekindled as I grew older,” he said. “It’s the sacred tie to land and the environment that I believe every Southeast Asian holds.”
This deep connection to land, combined with personal experiences of transboundary haze that left him hospitalised multiple times as a child, sparked in Han a lifelong commitment to climate justice. “I remember feeling angry, blaming Indonesia naively, as many Malaysians did. But I now understand that it’s a systemic issue, and sadly, this is the story of many Malaysians and Southeast Asians,” he said.
Transboundary haze, caused by slash-and-burn practices in Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, and Laos has been a recurring environmental and public health crisis in Southeast Asia for decades, choking cities and disrupting lives across the region.
These formative memories ultimately drove him to action. In 2020, at just 19 years old, he co-founded Youths United For Earth (YUFE), a grassroots non-profit that mobilises Malaysian youth for local climate action. Today, YUFE runs Malaysia’s first and largest sustainability mentorship programme, that prioritises Indigenous and marginalised youth while connecting undergraduates with environmental leaders around the world. To date, over 70 youth have spearheaded campaigns reaching more than 30,000 Malaysians through the platform.
Now pursuing a master’s degree in environmental change and management at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, Han is also one of three youth activists working with environmental defenders and policymakers to draft Southeast Asia’s first Environmental Human Rights Framework. In 2024, he became the first Southeast Asian to receive the Future Nobel Laureate Scholarship, awarded to just 11 students globally, in recognition of his advocacy for environmental rights in Malaysia and across the region.
From small-town roots to regional activism, Han’s journey continues to be fuelled by a core belief: that Southeast Asia’s relationship with the land isn’t just cultural, it’s a foundation for environmental justice. In this interview, Han, who is among the winners of Eco-Business’s Sustainability Leadership Youth A-List 2025, talks about why it’s important for Southeast Asians to renew their relationship with the land and start taking action to protect the environment.
What first sparked your passion for climate action and sustainability?
I always wanted to get involved in the environment, but I remember as a teenager, I didn’t know how to get started. We had always thought that getting involved in environmentalism meant taking individual actions like refusing straws, turning off lights, volunteering and recycling.
I saw a newspaper ad by Roots & Shoots Malaysia (Rasma), and I was finishing up school [at the age of 17], so I decided to volunteer for them. I got to spend some time working very closely with coastal communities in Langkawi and Pulau Perhentian to find out how islanders were processing their trash. I did surveys with mak ciks [Malay for aunties] in the markets and used that data to design programmes for kids. I also spent a lot of time researching colugo, an endangered nocturnal mammal that not many people know about, and turtle conservation.
Two things emerged from this that really formed the idea for YUFE. One was that, as I was volunteering, I was gaining a lot of confidence in myself and felt that as a young person, I can contribute to change as well. I loved working with children. I remember this one five-year-old kid told me, “Oh my God, Max, why is it that we always focus on the plastic straw and not the whole plastic cup?” And I thought, “wow, kids are so prescient”. They’re so aware, able to learn, and so eager and passionate.
Han working with children on plastic pollution, an experience that inspired him to think about systemic action and driving change. Image: Max Han
It really inspired me to think about systemic action and to go beyond the straw to look at the cup. The other thing I realised as I was doing local biodiversity work with local conservationists, is that a lot of Malaysians, including myself, don’t know a lot about our local biodiversity, local heroes, Indigenous peoples and local histories. I felt that our relationship with the land and the environment was somewhat fractured, and I wanted to change that.
I wanted to move from talking about climate change in a very Western context, like polar bears and melting ice caps, to what we actually know – the floods that we experience, the coal transition we’re trying to take on and the biodiversity that we have and need to protect. Our Indigenous peoples already have some of the solutions. So, me and my friend Nurfatin Hamzah, also another Rasma volunteer, started with this idea of local storytelling by young people to share local stories.
What’s the biggest challenge you faced in the early days of founding YUFE?
Finding a really good team was difficult, especially since our team was very young. We were trying to build the foundations of an institution that would last, and that’s incredibly hard when you’re starting from scratch.
Everything began with just a Google Drive or a document, and we built things up from there. Creating that kind of institutional architecture requires mentorship, belief, and a lot of trial and error when you’re working with a lean team that’s figuring things out with you.
Looking back, I’m really grateful that Fatin and I had such a solid relationship as co-founders. That kind of leadership was key in mobilising everyone toward the same vision.
Most of our volunteers didn’t even come from environmental backgrounds. Many were studying economics, some already working, or still in school. It was such a diverse group that came together and getting everyone aligned was both a challenge and a beautiful part of the process.
YUFE has mobilised over 70 youths to spearheaded campaigns, reaching more than 30,000 Malaysians. For the first three to four years, the team operated on a mere RM1,000 (US$235).
The second challenge was funding, although young people and youth-led solutions tend to be are incredibly resourceful. We rarely get adequate funding but we’re very good at stretching what we get.
There’s a global statistic that finds that only 0.76 per cent of philanthropic funding goes to youth-led initiatives. In Malaysia, aside from Rasma and Yayasan Hasanah, there aren’t many funders, maybe Unicef grants here and there. So, we had to get creative. For the first three to four years, we operated on just RM1,000 (US$235), which mostly was spent on our website.
The third challenge was establishing the direction and scope of the organisation. We started small with local storytelling, small programmes, which then grew organically. Now, we are dealing with administrative tasks like registering under the Registrar of Societies Malaysia, hiring people, and managing human resources. All this is new and challenging. But five years in, I feel more comfortable managing all of it. To any young person thinking of starting an organisation, I’d say: familiarise yourself with institutional architecture. And also, ask yourself: is there a real demand for this?
How did you personal background influence your decisions to focus on youth and marginalised communities in your work?
There are a lot of young people who want to take action but don’t know how – that’s where the gap lies, in what we call carbon capability: bridging the gap between knowledge, awareness, and systemic action. I went through that journey myself when working with coastal communities, diving deep into environmental issues and I realised that this work is doable for young people.
When the Fridays for Future movement emerged led by Greta Thunberg, young people started seeing relatable role models. That’s what YUFE tries to do in our own way by showing that environmentalism isn’t just about conservation or hugging trees. It could be a policymaker, like our minister, working on national climate policies. Or it could be activists and NGOs holding leaders accountable. Young people are everywhere in this space in Malaysia, and we want to bring them together and show others the many ways to contribute to environmental change.
Han believes that tackling climate change requires engaging all stakeholders, including NGOs, and the public and private sectors, as it touches every part of society. Image: Joshua Belayan
A lot of people always think about environmental change in isolation. But it is something that touches every facet of society, just like artificial intelligence (AI). In fact, climate and AI are the two major crises we’re navigating right now. That’s why I believe the best environmentalists are those who can speak engage with every stakeholder, from NGOs to the public and private sectors.
When it comes to marginalised communities, you simply cannot talk about environmental justice without them. That’s something we’ve tried to reflect not only in our programmes, but in the way YUFE itself is structured. We have team members from Sarawak, Sabah, Kedah, and other parts of Malaysia as well as Kuala Lumpur and Selangor.
Your mentorship programme has grown into a national platform. So, how do you ensure Indigenous and marginalised youths aren’t just included but are actually leading YUFE’s programmes?
Our mentorship programme allows students to become ambassadors of the programme and some of our mentors have a preference to work with youths from low-income backgrounds. We have set a quota, and we make sure a lot of these groups are represented during the application process. We conduct extensive outreach to Orang Asli groups even before we launch the programme to ensure inclusion in terms of participation.
As part of the programme, we also pay participants to join consultations that help us improve the programme’s inclusivity and relevance. That included offering internet allowances during Covid, when we first launched the programme in response to rising youth unemployment.
For many of our mentees from underserved groups, that small support made a huge difference. It allowed them to reduce part-time work hours so they could focus on mentorship. Some of our mentees have shown really strong interest in the programme and have really benefited from it. We have hired these people as short-term contractors and partners to help run the programme under our supervision.
You’re currently helping draft Southeast Asia’s first Environmental Human Rights Framework. What are some of the key principles you’re advocating for as a representative from Malaysia?
The Asean Environmental Rights Declaration is going to be Asean’s first-ever environmental rights document. This builds off the Asean Human Rights Declaration from 2012, that was more than 10 years ago. So, this is a key opportunity to ensure environmental rights are protected in this region, because Asean is really slow.
Max is one of three youth activists working with environmental defenders and policymakers to draft Southeast Asia’s first Environmental Human Rights Framework under Asean. Image: Max Han
This declaration aims to institutionalise and define environmental rights in an Asean context. At the international level, we already have the universal right to a safe, clean, and healthy environment in the UN General Assembly resolution 76/300, passed in 2022. A lot of this legislation is now trickling down to regional and national levels to institutionalise it. That’s what we’re trying to do here. Latin America has already done it through the Escazú Agreement, the world’s first legally binding treaty to protect environmental defenders. We have similar issues in Asean, so this is a chance to harmonise protections into a clear regional document.
However, there have been many challenges, especially around consultations, political will, and how participatory the process is. I must give some credit to Asean as this level of participation and inclusion of civil society is not common, but for this process, we had the opportunity to sit at the same table, draft together, and negotiate. That’s a big step, though still the bare minimum, and I hope it continues.
There were some tricky and sticky demands in the room. They came from consultations with over 500 individuals and groups across Southeast Asia. There are five key demands, which include protecting environmental defenders and Indigenous peoples, enforcing environmental rights, and strengthening environmental impact assessments.
Given the delay of the Asean Environmental Rights Declaration, how are you ensuring that the final draft will be more inclusive and robust? Does Malaysia’s Asean chairmanship help advance the inclusivity agenda?
The problem with Asean is that everything needs to be unanimously decided. This is a huge risk when you’re lobbying for something. If we ask for something too ambitious and one member doesn’t want to sign on, the document becomes a stalemate and gets discarded. So, there’s a lot to consider when pushing for a draft that’s more inclusive or robust. One way we’ve approached it is with data.
This can be contentious, because while we push for data and evidence-based advocacy at the international level, like using language from the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007), some Asean leaders argue that just because it exists internationally doesn’t mean it can be passed in Asean. They want to see that it has already been adopted in Asean, which was a difficult position to be in if no regional document has addressed it before. So, we had to get creative with legal evidence, showing where Asean has previously used certain terms, like “Indigenous peoples”, which is highly contested in Asean because it holds different political weight in different countries.
We have gone through the painstaking process of extensive research to ensure the final draft is more inclusive and robust, backed by evidence and data. If that doesn’t work, the next stage would be strategic lobbying across the region. I’m glad that media like Eco-Business have reported on these issues which helps us create awareness publicly. Asean processes are usually kept behind closed doors so when more people are aware of them, they can pressure their governments to sign the declaration.
On Malaysia’s Asean chairmanship, I think we’ve been more silent in the past, but with representatives like Edmund Bon, and more momentum for climate action, things are shifting. Our budget has increasingly allocated money for conservation and environmental change, and our ministries have become more vocal on climate action for the Global South.
Environment minister Nik Nazmi has also expressed support for passing this environmental rights declaration. Malaysia has the power as chair to push this agenda forward. If we can get it passed during our term, it would fit the theme of inclusivity and sustainability. I think Malaysia needs to put its foot down politically, in a way that is both firm and palatable, to really push this declaration forward without compromising on the five core principles. This is the bare minimum. It was supposed to be legally binding and now it’s not, but even as a non-binding declaration, it’s still an important frame of reference for communities.
You’ve worked in startups and consulting as well as grassroots activism. What lessons have you learned?
I believe that everyone has a love and purpose for people and planet but that manifests in different ways, and because of that, there’s a disconnect. For instance, economists and businesspeople say the solution lies in relentless economic growth. They believe in the idea of green growth – that we can decouple emissions from economic development. The grassroots groups, on the other hand, believe in rekindling our relationship with the land and cherishing our natural resources. The startup world believes that tech will innovate us out of everything, essentially achieving what economists want, using technology to cut emissions while still growing.
As a young leader, Han sees himself as a bridge builder between policymakers and youth, connecting young people to decision-makers so they understand both policy language and how climate change impacts their lives. Image: Max Han
I don’t think there’s a clear right or wrong approach. But one lesson I’ve learned is that all these groups need to come together and talk to each other more respectfully. Grassroots groups have deep wisdom because they work directly with frontline communities. They understand what these communities need. Policymakers and businesspeople need to take that seriously, because this lived knowledge can be more valuable than the way they conceptualise environmental change.
I see myself as a bridge builder of both worlds. At YUFE, I’ve focused on connecting young people to policymakers, so they understand both the policy language and how climate change impacts youth. This helps shape policies that are more youth-sensitive. At Asean, I work with diverse communities, environmental defenders, lawyers and journalists. They face unique challenges, and they need to be in decision-making spaces and contribute meaningfully. Policymakers must listen to realities on the ground and not dismiss solutions that go beyond the economics they know and what they define as practical reality.
Everyone might not be fully happy, but we need strong reconciliation of perspectives and bridge-building. Environmental issues are holistic, they’re not just economic or political. We need to recognise that as we work on environmental solutions.
What keeps you grounded and hopeful amid growing climate anxiety in Southeast Asia?
My short answer is people, especially frontline communities and their resilience. I strongly believe that we need to honour both our hope and our anger with action. That’s why I started YUFE – for young people to bring their hopes into policy, projects and the communities around them.
Through my work, I’ve met so many inspiring individuals, not just in Malaysia, but in the Philippines, Indonesia, and across Southeast Asia who are all doing the same work. That collective action gives me hope. I often think about the parable of the choir where everyone sings the same note together. If one person needs to pause and breathe, the song can continue, carried on by others.
The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. Max Han Kai Ding was one of 8 sustainability leaders selected for the Eco-Business Sustainability Youth A-List 2025. Read our stories on other Youth A-List winners here.
