WEF’s Chief Sustainability Officers’ Outlook 2026

The World Economic Forum recently published the Chief Sustainability Officers’ Outlook 2026, a report based on a survey of 103 sustainability leaders from companies around the world. Rather than pointing to a retreat from the sustainability agenda, the report reflects a shift in what is driving it: the business case, technology, competitiveness, and resilience are gaining importance.

We recommend reading the full report, but here we highlight 8 data points that we believe are particularly relevant to understanding where the sustainability agenda is heading over the coming months:

1. 63% expect global progress on sustainability to remain stable or accelerate, despite a complex economic and geopolitical environment.
2. 69% expect corporate sustainability strategies and investments to remain stable or accelerate.
3. Over the next three years, 64% of CSOs believe that a stronger and clearer business case for sustainability initiatives will be a key driver of progress.
4. 68% see regulatory uncertainty, policy reversals or inconsistent regulatory signals as one of the main barriers to progress over the next three years.
5. However, 65% say the C-suite still primarily views sustainability as a compliance obligation. The challenge for CSOs will be to connect environmental issues more directly with decisions around revenue, costs, risk, investment, productivity and competitiveness.
6. 66% expect short-term performance pressures on sustainability issues to gain ground relative to longer-term priorities.
7. 73% expect artificial intelligence to accelerate progress on sustainability, particularly in areas such as environmental risk modelling, energy and resource efficiency, measurement and reporting.
8. 62% identify the difficulty of demonstrating cost-benefit as the main barrier to investment in adaptation. The challenge appears to be not only recognizing climate risk but also translating resilience into an investment proposition that can compete for capital.

As these results show, the corporate sustainability agenda is undergoing a transformation. The political and economic environment has become more challenging, and companies are facing greater short-term pressures, but this does not necessarily mean the transition is slowing. Instead, the logic behind it is changing.

The sustainability initiatives that appear most likely to endure are those that can be clearly linked to economic value, efficiency, competitiveness, and resilience. For this reason, we believe the next phase of corporate sustainability will depend less on announcing new ambitions, and more on demonstrating that those ambitions can be implemented and can deliver tangible results that make businesses stronger and more resilient.

I hope you found this interesting. As usual, if there is anything we can help you with, or if there is an ESG topic you would like to know more about, please let us know.

Best,

Marimar

CEO, Miranda ESG