From Readiness to Responsibility: Board-Level Accountability for AI-Driven Regenerative Governance in ASEAN

However, corporate governance continues to disclose, rather than address, socio-ecological crises: GRI, SASB, TCFD, and ISSB frameworks measure harm avoided but not good restored, whereas Malaysian and ASEAN policy increasingly demands the design of industries to be "restorative or regenerative". The thesis of this paper is that the gap resulting from such a mismatch should be viewed not as one of data but of accountability, and that its closure should rely on the shift of corporate boards from preparedness to deploying AI-powered RegTech platforms to accountability for the fiduciary duty to account for what the platforms promise to deliver. By integrating theories of corporate governance, regenerative development, and circular economy with RegTech-readiness literature, the paper reinterprets four key board-level dimensions (data governance, algorithmic explainability, control ownership, and regulatory mapping) in terms of a regenerative accountability threshold and identifies two failure modes that are regenerative washing (unvalidated net-positive impact claims) and the regenerative fiduciary duty (the extended director liability beyond the company's boundaries). Grounding itself in Malaysia's regenerative economy framework and non-delegable directorial liability system (Companies Act 2016), the paper concludes with five propositions for ASEAN and emerging markets' experimentation. The core of the paper's argumentation is that preparedness is a prerequisite of accountability but not an alternative to it.

Regenerative Economy, Board Accountability, Artificial Intelligence, Circular Economy, ASEAN

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