Nearly two-thirds of chief sustainability officers expect global sustainability progress to hold steady or accelerate over the next 12 months, despite significant geopolitical uncertainty. New World Economic Forum research suggests a stronger commercial case, advancing technology and resilience are increasingly driving the transition, shifting the sustainability challenge from ambition to execution.
The global sustainability transition is continuing despite significant geopolitical and economic disruption, with businesses increasingly anchoring climate and sustainability strategies in commercial value, resilience and growth, according to new research from the World Economic Forum (WEF). The Forum’s inaugural Chief Sustainability Officers Outlook, published on 15 September 2026, finds that 63% of chief sustainability officers expect global sustainability progress to hold steady or accelerate over the next 12 months.
Three in four also expect companies’ transition-related investment to remain stable or increase. A clearer economic case, cited by 64%, and increasingly applicable technologies, cited by 56%, are among the strongest drivers of momentum. The findings reinforce a wider shift Fair Play Talks identified in its Sustainability in 2026: How Businesses Are Shaping the Green Agenda: sustainability is increasingly moving away from signalling intent and towards demonstrating tangible business outcomes, resilience and long-term value.
“Chief sustainability officers are telling us the transition is no longer a question of ambition, it’s a question of execution,” said Sebastian Buckup, Managing Director at the World Economic Forum. “As companies deliberately anchor sustainability strategies in growth, security and resilience needs, execution speed and priorities increasingly diverge across regions and sectors.”
The inaugural survey gathered responses from 103 sustainability leaders across five continents between 10 February and 18 March 2026, all members of the Forum’s Chief Sustainability Officers Community.
FROM AMBITION TO EXECUTION
The findings suggest corporate sustainability is entering a new phase. Businesses increasingly recognise the commercial logic behind sustainability, but the challenge now lies in translating commitments into investment decisions, operating models, products, procurement choices and measurable outcomes.
That shift builds on previous research showing that nine in 10 global CEOs believe the business case for sustainability is stronger than it was five years ago. That research also pointed to an execution gap between ambition and organisations’ ability to deliver through technology, governance and skills.
The latest WEF findings suggest closing that gap has become even more important. According to the Forum, many of the most consequential sustainability decisions are not labelled as sustainability decisions at all. Decisions about where organisations build, what they source, which technologies they deploy, how they design products and which risks they price can shape costs, resource use and resilience for years.
GREEN ECONOMY ON TRACK TO TOP $7 TRILLION
The commercial backdrop remains significant. The global green economy is now worth more than $5 trillion annually and is on track to exceed $7 trillion by 2030, according to the WEF, making it one of the fastest-growing segments of the global economy.
That helps explain why geopolitical uncertainty has not produced a uniform sustainability retreat. Instead, the Forum identifies what it calls a “green divergence” – different sectors, markets and regions moving through the transition at increasingly different speeds.
Some are accelerating where the economics and technology are compelling, while others face slower progress because of policy uncertainty, geopolitical disruption or difficulty convincing boards of the short-term business case.
GEOPOLITICAL PRESSURES WEIGH ON PROGRESS
The optimism among CSOs should not be mistaken for an absence of serious headwinds. Some 78% expect geopolitical and macroeconomic pressures – including conflict, inconsistent policy and weakening multilateral cooperation – to weigh on sustainability progress over the next year.
WEF also identifies policy uncertainty, short-term business pressures and geopolitical volatility as forces making implementation increasingly uneven. Rather than stopping the transition outright, those pressures appear to be changing where and how quickly businesses invest.
Projects with clear financial, operational or resilience benefits can continue moving, while initiatives whose returns are harder to quantify risk being delayed. That makes organisations’ ability to demonstrate sustainability’s financial value increasingly important.
Previous research found that many companies still struggle to measure sustainability ROI, with 41% of executives describing their measurement as inadequate or uncertain. That study also found 82% regarded demonstrating ROI as important for securing internal alignment and financial support, while 69% said it helped embed sustainability into wider operational goals.
AI COULD ACCELERATE SUSTAINABILITY
Artificial intelligence emerges as one of the most striking contradictions in the WEF research. Some 73% of CSOs expect AI to meaningfully accelerate sustainability progress over the next year, particularly through measurement, reporting, efficiency and risk modelling.
Yet 77% identify the energy and resource intensity of AI infrastructure itself as its most significant negative impact. Data centres already account for roughly 1.5% of global electricity demand, highlighting what the Forum describes as a form of green divergence within a single technology.
The finding reinforces a wider challenge Fair Play Talks has previously explored in its coverage of companies struggling to meet climate targets as AI adds environmental pressure. That research found 95% of organisations had committed to science-based targets or structured climate plans, yet 37% were already experiencing delays in achieving them. The WEF findings suggest responsible AI adoption increasingly requires organisations to consider not only what AI can help optimise, but also the energy, water, infrastructure and resource demands created by deploying it at scale.
HOW AI CAN DELIVER MEASURABLE BENEFITS
The picture is not entirely negative. The WEF highlights Schneider Electric as one example of how AI-enabled technologies can support measurable progress.
AI-enabled microgrids reportedly helped reduce energy consumption by 14% and CO2 emissions by 28% per site annually across 97 locations. The company has also been featured in the world’s most sustainable companies.
The challenge for businesses will be ensuring that the environmental gains produced by AI outweigh the additional resources needed to power it.
PRIORITISING CLIMATE ADAPTATION
Climate adaptation represents another major shift identified by sustainability leaders. Some 85% of CSOs expect adaptation to become a bigger global priority over the next three years. And 77% believe private-sector investment will be decisive in scaling it.
Yet 62% identify uncertain cost-benefit assessments as the main barrier to adaptation investment. That problem is partly structural.
Companies can measure revenue from a new product or savings from greater efficiency. Resilience investments often create value differently, by preventing disruptions, damage or losses that might otherwise have occurred. That can make them harder to justify when competing for capital against projects promising visible short-term returns.
CONSEQUENCES OF FAILING TO BUILD RESILIENCE
The economic potential of adaptation is nevertheless substantial. According to figures highlighted by the Forum, CDP estimates that businesses actively managing supply-chain risk have generated $13.6 billion in savings to date, with a further $165 billion in potential financial benefits still available.
The consequences of failing to build resilience can also be enormous. Insurers had paid around $22.4 billion in claims relating to the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires by early 2026. Analysis cited by the Forum also suggests rebuilding affected communities to wildfire-resilience standards could reduce projected future losses by around one-third.
Those figures show why climate adaptation is increasingly becoming not simply an environmental issue, but a question of capital allocation, asset protection, business continuity and long-term financial resilience.
SUSTAINABILITY INVESTMENT MATTERS
Katharina Beumelburg, Chief Sustainability and New Technologies Officer at Heidelberg Materials, said expectations placed on sustainability leaders are changing rapidly. “The conversation is shifting from whether to act on sustainability to how fast we can prove it pays off. CSOs today are expected to deliver a business case as rigorous as any other investment decision, on resilience, on AI, on the transition as a whole,” noted Beumelburg. “The organisations that treat this as a growth opportunity, not a compliance exercise, are the ones that will be ahead when the numbers are finally called in.”
Her comments capture one of the report’s central messages: sustainability increasingly needs to compete for investment on similar terms to other strategic priorities. That marks a significant shift from treating sustainability primarily as a reporting, compliance or corporate responsibility function.
SUSTAINABILITY NEEDS DEEPER BUSINESS INTEGRATION
Previous research suggests many organisations are still working through that transition. A Conference Board study found that less than a third of companies had fully integrated sustainability programmes.
Only 31% of sustainability executives said their organisations had fully implemented sustainability programmes, while 48% were at a mid-stage of maturity and 21% remained at an early stage.
Recent research also found that 84% of S&P 500 companies have climate targets, yet most are still failing to reduce emissions significantly. Together, those findings reinforce the WEF’s argument that execution – rather than ambition alone – is becoming the defining sustainability challenge.
FROM COMPLIANCE TO GROWTH AND RESILIENCE
The WEF research also signals a broader evolution in the role of the chief sustainability officer. Sustainability increasingly intersects with commercial strategy, operations, capital expenditure, technology, supply chains and risk management.
That means CSOs need to influence decisions far beyond traditional sustainability teams. It also means finance, operations, procurement, technology and senior leadership increasingly share responsibility for whether sustainability goals translate into meaningful outcomes.
The shift towards deeper integration mirrors the argument Fair Play Talks made at the start of the year: 2026 is shaping up to be a defining test of whether businesses can move beyond commitments and deliver measurable sustainability outcomes.
WHAT RESPONSIBLE BUSINESS LEADERS SHOULD DO NEXT
The WEF findings suggest business leaders should increasingly treat sustainability as part of mainstream commercial decision-making rather than as a parallel ESG programme. Recommendations include:
- Connecting sustainability investments to business value, including growth, productivity, cost reduction, resilience and risk.
- Moving sustainability into capital-allocation decisions, rather than assessing it mainly through reporting or compliance.
- Strengthening climate-adaptation business cases, including the value of avoided losses and reduced disruption.
- Assessing AI’s full environmental footprint, including energy, infrastructure and resource use as well as the efficiencies it creates.
- Bringing sustainability, finance, risk, technology and operations teams closer together so decisions reflect both commercial and environmental realities.
- Avoiding allowing short-term performance pressures to undermine long-term resilience, especially where preventative investments are harder to quantify.
- Measuring execution as carefully as ambition, focusing on whether sustainability commitments change investments, procurement, products and operating decisions.
SUSTAINABILITY’S NEXT PHASE
The inaugural WEF Outlook presents a sustainability transition that is neither uniformly accelerating nor simply retreating. Instead, it is becoming more commercially grounded and increasingly uneven. Strong economics and advancing technologies are creating momentum in some areas, while geopolitical instability, inconsistent policy and short-term performance pressures slow progress elsewhere. AI encapsulates that contradiction: it could significantly accelerate sustainability while simultaneously increasing pressure on energy and natural resources.
Climate adaptation presents another: its economic importance is becoming clearer, yet businesses still struggle to prove the returns from preventing events that may never occur. What links these challenges is execution. Corporate leaders increasingly appear convinced that sustainability matters. The harder task is deciding where to invest, how quickly to act and how convincingly to demonstrate value.
As sustainability moves deeper into commercial strategy, the organisations that can translate environmental ambition into resilient business models, credible investment cases and measurable outcomes are likely to shape the next phase of the transition. The question is increasingly no longer simply whether businesses intend to act – but whether they can prove that action creates lasting value.
Read the latest WEF Chief Sustainability Officer’s Outlook report here.
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