Today's global challenges remain stark: geopolitical fragmentation is deepening, trust in institutions continues to erode, and the climate crisis is accelerating. Sustainability regulation is being recalibrated around the world, but not in the same direction or at the same pace everywhere. In 2026, the EU narrowed the mandatory scope of its core reporting and due diligence directives by roughly 90%, even as the UK, US states, Japan, Singapore and China continue to expand their own, often divergent, ESG obligations. The result is a widening, uneven gap between regulatory floors and the sustained expectations of investors, consumers and civil society worldwide, leaving legal and sustainability leaders to navigate credibility, litigation and reputational risk without the clarity that mandatory frameworks once promised.

The same pattern of recalibration is now playing out in artificial intelligence. The promise of major efficiency gains from AI adoption is colliding with rising concern over its social and environmental footprint – from workforce displacement to the energy and water demands of the infrastructure behind it – just as regulators, including the EU with its own AI Act, move to defer several of the high-risk obligations meant to govern it. Leaders everywhere are being asked to sustain long-term commitments amid short-term volatility, often with limited internal alignment on how far to go beyond what the law currently requires and with fewer external mandates to point to when making that case internally.

The case for continued action on corporate sustainability has not weakened. Investors, employees and consumers continue to reward credible performance and penalise misalignment, and the companies best positioned for long-term resilience are those that keep moving deliberately rather than waiting for a regulatory certainty that may not arrive.

The UN Global Compact is convening a Dilemmas Forum in New York at the UN Global Compact Leaders Summit during UN General Assembly High-Level Week. The event is organised by the UN Global Compact Network UK in partnership with the UN Global Compact, with support from Linklaters, Slaughter & May, Crown Agents Bank, and other UN Global Compact Country Networks.

Now in its second year, the UN Global Compact Dilemmas Forum continues a first-of-its-kind model of leadership collaboration – bringing together diverse C-suite leaders to share perspectives, challenge assumptions and co-create forward-looking responses to the strategic dilemmas reshaping global business. Participants will take part in a scenario-based workshop in which each table explores a hypothetical dilemma structured around one of four themes: regulatory recalibration and divergence, value chain accountability, communication and credibility risk, and AI efficiency and impact trade-offs. This format enables the distillation of key themes from cross-functional dialogue and supports the development of targeted messages for business leaders, contributing to a more sustainable, resilient, and inclusive future.