Sixty Global Sustainability Leaders Land in Colombo Next Week — Here Is Who Is Actually in the Room, and What They Will Be Asked to Commit To
The UN Global Compact’s flagship Asia-Pacific event opens at Cinnamon Life on 11 August. Sri Lankan coverage has reported three names. The published roster carries sixty, including thirteen Sri Lankan organisations, the UN Principles for Responsible Investment and UNEP Finance Initiative. The session where capital meets companies is invitation-only.
By the ESGNexus Editorial Team · August 2026 · Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
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KEY TAKEAWAYS
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On 11 August, sixty named sustainability leaders from across Asia-Pacific and beyond will convene at Cinnamon Life at City of Dreams in Colombo for the UN Global Compact’s flagship regional event. Sri Lanka’s business press has covered the announcement four times. Between them, those reports named three speakers.
The full roster has been published for weeks. So has the agenda, the venue, the session formats and the ticket prices. None of it has appeared in local coverage, which has largely reproduced the organisers’ press release. That gap matters, because the detail changes what the event looks like — and what a Sri Lankan executive should do about it in the seven days remaining.
What Is Actually Happening, and Where
“Forward Faster Now | APAC 2026: Driving Business Leadership for Sustainable and Inclusive Growth” runs across two days, 11 and 12 August 2026, hosted by the UN Global Compact with Global Compact Network Sri Lanka and Country Networks across the region. The venue is Cinnamon Life at City of Dreams, No 01 Justice Akbar Mawatha, Colombo 00200.
The structure is a plenary track with two parallel breakout tracks. Day one runs from an 8:00 registration to a 17:30 close, followed by an evening reception. Day two ends at 14:00. The agenda is not a series of keynotes — it is weighted towards workshops, fireside chats and closed peer sessions.
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Time |
Session |
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Day 1, 09:00 |
High-Level Opening: Setting the Scene, followed by the opening panel, Forward Faster Business |
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Day 1, 11:30 |
Three parallel tracks: Climate Action in Motion (plenary); Mobilising Capital towards Global Goals (fireside chat); Driving Gender Equality in Business Leadership (workshop) |
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Day 1, 13:40 |
Empowering SMEs and Supply Chains (plenary); Water Resilience and Nature-Positive Business (panel); Shared Purpose, Shared Value |
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Day 1, 14:50 |
Governance, Integrity and Accountability (plenary); Reimagining Business Through Digital Innovation; From Commitment to Enforcement: HREDD (workshop) |
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Day 1, 16:20 |
High-Level CSO Panel — Leading with Conviction |
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Day 2, 09:00 |
SDG Investment Forum, hosted by Global Compact Network Sri Lanka — invitation only; UPSHIFT: From Waste to Value (workshop); Get to know the UN Global Compact |
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Day 2, 10:15 |
From Policy to Practice: Making Anti-Corruption Work (workshop); CSO Peer Group meeting — invitation only, Chatham House Rule |
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Day 2, 11:45 |
SDG-Aligned Innovation and Private Sector Investment (C-suite focus); ESG Data Management for Decision-Making (corporate case studies) |
Source: UN Global Compact, ‘Forward Faster Now | APAC 2026’ published agenda, accessed 4 August 2026 — globalcompactglobalopps.swoogo.com. Times as published; sessions abridged.
Who Is in the Room from Sri Lanka
This is the part local coverage missed. Sixteen of the sixty named speakers represent Sri Lankan organisations — fourteen of them drawn from thirteen companies, plus two from Global Compact Network Sri Lanka, which co-hosts the event. The seniority is notable: a group finance director, two chief executives, a chief risk officer, a chief financial officer, a chief sustainability officer and a managing director. These are not delegates sent to observe.
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Organisation |
Representative |
Role |
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Dilmah Ceylon Tea Company PLC |
Dilhan Fernando |
Chairman/CEO; also Board Chair, Global Compact Network Sri Lanka |
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Commercial Bank of Ceylon PLC |
Kapila Hettihamu |
Chief Risk Officer |
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MAS Holdings |
Surath Chandrasena |
Group Finance Director |
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Hirdaramani Group |
Siddarth Hirdaramani |
Executive Director |
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Dialog Axiata PLC |
Romesh Ranawana; Nicole Elias |
Group Chief Analytics and AI Officer; Assistant Manager, Integrity and Ethics Compliance |
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Aitken Spence |
Yasangi Muditha Randeni |
Chief Sustainability Officer |
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AIA Sri Lanka |
Chathuri Munaweera |
Director/Chief Executive Officer |
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Kelani Valley Plantations PLC |
Roshan Rajadurai |
Managing Director |
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WindForce PLC |
Rusiri Cooray |
Chief Financial Officer |
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KPMG Sri Lanka |
Pyumi Sumanasekara |
Partner |
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Selyn Group |
Selyna Peiris |
Chief Growth Officer |
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Good Life X |
Randhula de Silva |
Founder and Chair |
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Fortude (Pvt.) Ltd. |
Manindra Dharmadasa |
Vice President, Global Infor Consulting |
Source: UN Global Compact, ‘Forward Faster Now | APAC 2026’ published speakers page, accessed 4 August 2026 — globalcompactglobalopps.swoogo.com. Global Compact Network Sri Lanka is additionally represented by Janani Wijetunge, Head of Programmes and Governance, and board member Ravi Fernando. ESGNexus has not independently confirmed the Colombo Stock Exchange listing status of each entity named.
The Two Names That Matter Most Are Not Corporate
Nathan Fabian, Chief Policy and Research Officer at the UN Principles for Responsible Investment, and Nirnita Talukdar, Asia-Pacific Regional Lead at the UNEP Finance Initiative, are both on the roster. Amita Chaudhury, Group Head of Sustainability at AIA and Chair of the UNEP FI Principles for Sustainable Insurance, is a third.
PRI and UNEP FI do not run companies. They set the frameworks that determine how the world’s asset owners and insurers interpret corporate sustainability disclosure — which is to say, they shape the standards against which Sri Lankan companies raising foreign capital will eventually be measured. Sri Lanka’s top 100 listed companies are in their first mandatory SLFRS S1 and S2 reporting year. The people who influence how investors read that output will be in Colombo for two days.
One caution on the record. Local reporting described the SDG Investment Forum as developed with PRI and UNEP FI. The published agenda describes it only as hosted by Global Compact Network Sri Lanka and names no partner institution. Both organisations are confirmed present at the event. Whether they are formal partners on that specific session is not established in any published material, and ESGNexus does not assert it.
What Forward Faster Actually Asks Companies to Commit To
“Forward Faster” is not a conference theme. It is a UN Global Compact initiative built on five action areas, each carrying specific, dated targets that participating companies are asked to adopt publicly and report on annually. Any Sri Lankan executive walking into Cinnamon Life should know what is being asked, because the asking is the point of the event.
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Action area |
The commitment, as published |
By |
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Climate action |
Set corporate science-based net-zero emissions reduction targets through the Science Based Targets initiative, aligned to a 1.5C pathway |
Net zero by 2050 at the latest |
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Living wage |
100 per cent of employees across the organisation earn a living wage |
2030 |
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Gender equality |
Equal representation, participation and leadership across all levels of management; equal pay for work of equal value |
2030 |
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Water resilience |
Build water resilience across operations and supply chains, and contribute to collective positive water impact in at least 100 vulnerable prioritised water basins |
2030 |
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Finance and investment |
Align corporate investment with SDG policies and strategies; set targets, track and report the amount and proportion of SDG investment and finance |
2030 |
Source: UN Global Compact, Forward Faster action area pages, accessed 4 August 2026 — forwardfaster.unglobalcompact.org. Target wording condensed from the published text; the climate action area additionally asks companies to contribute to a just transition.
| 100 per cent of employees across the organisation earn a living wage by 2030. — UN Global Compact, Forward Faster living wage target |
Read that target against a Sri Lankan apparel or plantation payroll and the scale of the commitment becomes clear. It is not a disclosure obligation. It is a wage-floor obligation, self-declared, with annual progress reporting attached. The same is true of the gender target, which asks for equal representation at all levels of management — not a board quota, but a whole-management-structure commitment.
The Question the Numbers Do Not Answer
One hundred and eleven Sri Lankan organisations are signed up as UN Global Compact participants. The network was launched in 2011, making this its fifteenth year, and it is led by Executive Director Rathika de Silva. The largest represented sectors are clothing and accessories with eight participants, and farming, fishing and plantations, food products, computer services and banks with six each.
How many of those 111 have made a formal Forward Faster commitment to any of the five targets? That number is not published. The Forward Faster platform references a companies-taking-action page but exposes no country-filterable list, and the UN Global Compact does not publish per-country commitment counts. ESGNexus could not establish the figure and will not estimate it.
This is the honest position, and it is worth stating plainly rather than papering over. Participation in the UN Global Compact requires a commitment to ten principles and an annual communication on progress. It does not require adopting any Forward Faster target. The distance between signing the principles and committing to a dated wage, emissions or gender target is exactly the distance the Colombo event exists to close. Whether it closes for Sri Lankan companies is measurable — but only after someone measures it.
The Session That Matters Most Is Closed
The SDG Investment Forum sits at 09:00 on day two, in the plenary room, in roundtable format. The agenda describes it as focused on institutional investors and corporate leaders, and marks it invitation-only. It is the single session on the two-day programme where capital and companies are put in a room together with a stated deal-making purpose.
Both sittings of the Chief Sustainability Officer peer group on day two are also invitation-only, and run under Chatham House Rule. The published agenda gives no criteria for either invitation list.
This is a normal and defensible design choice — candid conversation between investors and issuers rarely survives an open floor. But it has a consequence worth naming. The parts of the event most likely to produce capital allocation decisions affecting Sri Lankan companies will not be reported, will not be minuted publicly, and will be attended by a group whose composition is not disclosed. For a country in its first year of mandatory sustainability reporting, that is a meaningful information asymmetry, and companies not on the list should know it exists.
What to Do Before 11 August
1. Check whether your organisation is already a UN Global Compact participant. One hundred and eleven Sri Lankan organisations are. Participants have a separate registration rate for the event, and participant status is the practical route to the invitation-only sessions. If you do not know your status, the country participant list on unglobalcompact.org resolves it in a minute.
2. Decide on attendance this week, not next. As at 4 August 2026, the published rates are USD 250 for general admission at the non-participant rate and USD 150 for non-business and academia. The event site refers to an early-bird discount but publishes no deadline for it. Seven days out, the constraint is more likely to be room capacity than price.
3. Send the person who owns the number, not the person who owns the narrative. The Sri Lankan roster is weighted towards finance and risk — a group finance director, a chief risk officer, a chief financial officer. The sessions on ESG data management, capital mobilisation and SDG-aligned investment are technical. A communications delegate will get less out of this than a controller.
4. If you want to get into the SDG Investment Forum, ask now. It is invitation-only, and the criteria are not published. Global Compact Network Sri Lanka hosts it. That is the only channel, and it closes when the room fills.
5. Read the five Forward Faster targets before you arrive. The event is structured to convert attendance into public commitments. Arriving without a settled internal position on a 2030 living wage target or an SBTi-validated net-zero pathway means either committing without a mandate, or declining in a room where peers are committing. Neither is a good position to discover on the day.
What This Event Is, and What It Is Not
It is worth being precise about the nature of the thing, because the framing in circulation overstates it. This is a convening, not a negotiation. There is no communique on the agenda, no vote, no binding regional outcome, and no mechanism by which the event produces a decision that binds anyone. Reports suggesting the summit will decide something are describing a different kind of event.
What it is instead is a concentration of people. Sixty published speakers, a projected 200-plus delegates, the head of the UN Global Compact on the ground, and the policy leads of PRI and UNEP FI in the same building for two days. The 200-plus figure is an organiser projection made a fortnight out, and should be read as such until the room is counted. But for a market of Sri Lanka’s size, in its first mandatory reporting year, the concentration is real, and it is unusual.
The value of that is not in the plenary sessions, which will be recorded and summarised. It is in the corridor, the breakout workshop and the reception — and in whether a Sri Lankan company walks out having committed to something dated and public, or having attended.
ESGNexus will report from the event and will publish a post-event analysis in the same week, including which Sri Lankan companies made public Forward Faster commitments and which did not. That list, once it exists, becomes a tracked data point in our company disclosure profiles — the difference between a company that signs principles and one that accepts a dated target is exactly the kind of distinction our profile grading is built to capture. We will also continue to press for the per-country Forward Faster commitment data that is not currently published, because a participation count without a commitment count tells a reader very little.
Sources & Further Reading
UN Global Compact, “Forward Faster Now | APAC 2026” event site, speakers page, agenda and registration, accessed 4 August 2026 — globalcompactglobalopps.swoogo.com
UN Global Compact, “Sri Lanka — Engage Locally” country participant data, accessed 4 August 2026 — unglobalcompact.org
UN Global Compact, Forward Faster action areas: climate action, living wage, gender equality, water resilience, finance and investment, accessed 4 August 2026 — forwardfaster.unglobalcompact.org
Colombo Stock Exchange, Commercial Bank of Ceylon PLC company profile (COMB.N0000), accessed 4 August 2026 — cse.lk
Daily FT, “Asia-Pacific business leaders to convene in Sri Lanka for UN Global Compact’s flagship regional event”, 28 July 2026 — ft.lk
Sunday Times, “Asia-Pacific business leaders to meet in Sri Lanka under UN Global Compact event”, 26 July 2026 — sundaytimes.lk
UN Global Compact Network Australia, “UN Global Compact Forward Faster Now | APAC Conference 2026”, accessed 4 August 2026 — unglobalcompact.org.au
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Data disclaimer: Information in this article is sourced from publicly available documents. ESGNexus does not independently verify company disclosures. Errors and omissions excepted.