The World Economic Forum’s Sustainable Development Impact Meetings 2026 (SDIM26) took place in New York, USA on 21-24 September.
The meeting gathered senior leaders from across sectors and regions to advance solutions to shared opportunities and challenges, with a particular focus on long-term impact and building momentum.
The discussions took place amid fast-evolving economic, technological and geopolitical dynamics, as well as wider environmental challenges. Participants explored how to advance resilient economic growth and sustainable development, build responsible artificial intelligence (AI) and frontier technologies that create economic and societal value, and mobilize capital for greater impact.
The meetings, held alongside the 81st United Nations General Assembly High-Level Week, brought together 600 business executives, 100 top officials from government and international organizations, more than 100 civil society leaders, and representatives from academia and the next generation. The meetings focused on long-term impact and building momentum towards the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2027 in Davos, Switzerland.
“As prolonged conflicts and geopolitical tensions put energy, economic and diplomatic systems under strain, business leaders can play a critical role in shaping what comes next,” said Mirek Dušek, Managing Director, World Economic Forum. “By investing boldly, building resilience before crisis hits and working across borders when cooperation is hardest, they can help economies and societies navigate change with speed and purpose.”
Economic growth and sustainable development cannot be seen as competing objectives; instead, economies that invest in climate and nature are better positioned for long-term resilience and prosperity. Amid escalating geopolitical risks, new approaches to investment, productivity, resilience and development are urgently needed to create resilient growth that can endure future shocks.
As part of a longstanding tradition, the meetings convened a high-level luncheon of the Informal Gathering of World Economic Leaders (IGWEL), bringing together 70 leaders from business, government, international organizations, civil society and academia to explore international cooperation amid geopolitical, geo-economic and technological change, with a particular focus on economic growth and the implications of AI and other frontier technologies.
The WEF’s latest Chief Economists’ Outlook found the global economy stabilizing, though living costs are expected to rise faster than incomes across most regions. The inaugural Chief Sustainability Officers’ Outlook showed sustainability progress holding steady or accelerating, despite uneven progress across sectors and regions and persistent concerns around compliance and AI’s environmental footprint.
Broadening economic opportunity also requires closing persistent gender gaps. The 20th edition of the Global Gender Gap Report found that 69.2% of the global gender gap is closed across 145 economies, but progress remains fragile: at the current pace, full parity is still 120 years away. Champions of the Global Gender Parity Sprint convened to advance pathways towards parity by 2030 across senior leadership, technology and financial markets.
Strengthening resilience to climate risks was another key focus. A framework for strengthening workforce resilience to extreme heat and a playbook on investing in place-based resilience offered practical approaches to address the $2.4 trillion in productivity at risk from extreme heat and growing insurance pressures.
AI and frontier technologies are being deployed across economies and societies, unlocking opportunities to boost productivity, accelerate scientific discovery and expand access to healthcare, education and climate solutions. Ensuring that these benefits are broadly shared requires collaboration to close gaps in access, governance, skills and trust.
Communities, including the AI Global Alliance, convened around a shared question: how to harness AI for economic growth without forcing a trade-off between sovereignty and access to capabilities.
UpLink announced the winners of its Powering Tomorrow: Electricity Systems and AI in Supply Chains challenges, supporting solutions to strengthen energy systems and supply-chain resilience.
A report on more sustainable and resilient data-centre development highlighted efficiency measures that could reduce energy use by 6.5–11%, while analysis of more than 600 AI start-up solutions identified ways to strengthen supply-chain resilience.
A further report outlined four shifts needed to manage structural uncertainty, while new research on the Mediterranean examined the region’s potential as a production, energy and innovation corridor supporting resilient European value chains.
A report on New Economy Skills called for hybrid training, expanded apprenticeships and portable credentials as demand for trade and manufacturing workers rises.
Leaders from the Future of Jobs Initiative, Future Skills Alliance, Education 4.0 and Chief Learning Officers communities examined how AI is reshaping career pathways, highlighting the need to better connect education and employment as 63% of employers identified skills gaps as a key barrier to transformation.
The Global Coalition for Digital Safety advanced a life-cycle approach to child-safe AI, while a session on AI for Social Innovation laid the groundwork for a coalition set to launch in January 2027, with a goal of mobilizing $500 million by 2030.
Many of the communities facing the greatest development and climate challenges are also those where investment is hardest to mobilize. Public finance remains essential, particularly during times of crisis, but fiscal pressures and high sovereign debt limit what it can achieve alone.
The meetings explored how public finance, private investment and philanthropy can work together to unlock capital and support locally led, commercially viable solutions, particularly in fragile and frontier markets.
More than 20 Schwab Foundation social innovators and entrepreneurs contributed to discussions on development, climate adaptation and financing solutions, while roundtables on water, longevity and mining explored innovation, finance, procurement and partnerships to close the pilot-to-scale gap.
“Public finance cannot meet the scale of development challenges alone. Mobilizing private investment and philanthropy, alongside locally led solutions, will be essential to strengthen resilience and drive growth in fragile and frontier markets,” said Sheba Crocker, Managing Director, World Economic Forum.
