Sustainability leadership is shifting decisively away from Western dominance toward a multipolar landscape, with Asia-Pacific emerging as the primary center of gravity according to a new survey of corporate sustainability professionals. The GlobeScan-BSR study of 124 practitioners at billion-dollar companies found that 65 percent expect Asia-Pacific’s influence to grow over the next three years, while the European Union and China are also seen gaining traction. Meanwhile, 43 percent anticipate declining U.S. influence versus just 23 percent expecting growth, signaling a fundamental rebalancing of where sustainability standards and priorities are set.
The findings reflect a broader tightening across corporate sustainability functions. Respondents describe an environment of narrower priorities, deeper compliance focus, and constrained resources — conditions that favor pragmatic, regulation-driven agendas over voluntary ambition. This mirrors what many energy and industrial companies are experiencing: the transition from aspirational ESG targets to mandatory disclosure regimes, carbon border adjustments, and supply-chain due-diligence laws that carry legal and financial teeth.
For multinational operators, the implication is clear: single-region sustainability strategies are becoming obsolete. The EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, China’s dual-carbon goals and green taxonomy, and the evolving policy frameworks across Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East each demand distinct compliance architectures. Companies that treat these as a patchwork of local obligations rather than an integrated global system will face duplicative costs, reporting fatigue, and strategic blind spots.
The relative decline in expected U.S. influence stems less from policy vacuum than from fragmentation. While the Inflation Reduction Act catalyzed historic clean-energy investment, domestic political polarization has stalled federal climate legislation and created regulatory uncertainty around SEC disclosure rules, ESG investing guidance, and state-level preemption battles. That uncertainty contrasts with the more directional — if not always aligned — policy trajectories in Brussels, Beijing, and increasingly in APAC capitals where energy security and decarbonization are being pursued in tandem.
Success in this distributed landscape will require what the report calls “globally coherent, locally relevant” strategies: centralized governance that sets minimum standards and data infrastructure, paired with regional teams empowered to interpret emerging signals — whether a new taxonomy in Singapore, a methane regulation in Brazil, or a green hydrogen mandate in Saudi Arabia — and translate them into operational decisions. The sustainability function is evolving from a center of excellence into a network of sensory nodes.
Read the full report at Trellis.