A promising outlook: the top priorities for chief sustainability officers today

The agenda of chief sustainability officers (CSOs) is moving from ambition to execution. This shift is taking place within a demanding operating environment: geopolitical tensions, policy uncertainty and short-term business pressures are making progress more uneven, even as expectations for companies to deliver remain high, and the stakes continue to rise.

The World Economic Forum’s inaugural Chief Sustainability Officers’ Outlook, drawing on the perspectives of 103 CSOs, suggests on the one hand that sustainability momentum is holding and, on the other, that the conditions driving progress are changing. Nearly two-thirds of surveyed CSOs expect global progress to hold steady or accelerate over the next year, while a stronger business case (64%) and lower-cost, more widely available sustainable technologies (56%) emerge as the leading accelerators of progress over the next three years. At the same time, geopolitical volatility and short-term pressures are making progress uneven, while AI and adaptation are creating new opportunities and implementation challenges for business leaders.

Three chief sustainability officers from the Centre for Nature and Climate CSO community reveal what this shift looks like inside companies, reflecting on the priorities shaping their work today: from pathway realism and business integration, to adaptation and resilience, to pragmatic optimism and capital allocation.

Inside companies, sustainability is being redefined. It is increasingly embedded into planning, investment decisions and operations, informing how capital is allocated and how assets are run. Three shifts stand out.

The first is pathway realism. There is no single transition and no single speed. Energy systems will decarbonize through different combinations of technology and capital, shaped by each market's energy mix. Progress will look uneven across markets and industries, and won’t always be linear. That reflects economics rather than wavering ambition. Energy security is more critical today than ever, and it is met by producers who deliver through uncertainty. At ADNOC, that capability rests on resilience built over years through long-term investment, disciplined operations and partnerships that hold.

The second is moving sustainability out of compliance thinking. Momentum comes from commercial, technological and resilience imperatives. For example, at ADNOC we assess physical and transition climate risk asset by asset, under recognized climate and economic scenarios, and feed the findings into asset integrity planning and capital decisions. Carbon management sits inside business planning rather than beside it. Handled this way, mitigation and adaptation protect production, continuity and our license to operate.

The third is that sustainability is bigger than emissions. Rising energy demand asks more of us: managing resources responsibly, supporting the communities around our operations, and investing in education so future generations can carry the work forward. We call this sustainability with a big S: delivering energy in a way that supports people and creates opportunity. Companies meeting these responsibilities will be the ones trusted to power what comes next.

Driving progress on sustainability at Zurich means translating commitments into practical action, both in the way we manage our business and support our customers.

One area where this is already clear is climate adaptation and resilience. We address both through our Climate Transition Plan, because climate risks are not only environmental concerns. They affect business continuity, operations, supply chains, investment decisions and the availability and affordability of insurance. Our approach is to embed those risks into decision-making and focus on where action can reduce disruption and loss.

As an insurer, our contribution extends beyond managing our own exposure to risk. We can use climate data, modelling and risk engineering expertise to help customers understand vulnerabilities across their sites, operations and supply chains. We can then work with them to identify practical measures that strengthen preparedness, protect assets and support continuity.

This is particularly important because adaptation investments do not always produce an immediate or easily measured return. Their value often lies in avoided losses, securing business continuity and faster recovery. By bringing clearer risk insight to these decisions, we can help customers make a stronger case for prevention and resilience.

For Zurich, driving progress means applying this expertise consistently within our own business and making it useful to customers. It also means working with governments and other partners to strengthen the conditions for adaptation, including resilient infrastructure and effective public policy. This is how sustainability becomes part of business planning, investment and long-term decision-making, while supporting continued insurability for customers.

The World Economic Forum Chief Sustainability Officers' Outlook offers an overall message of confidence. Despite the near-term challenging economic and political environment, the majority of my CSO peer group and I remain optimistic about the direction of travel, increasingly seeing sustainability becoming embedded in the way business is done.

The Outlook points to an important evolution in the role of the CSO. Sustainability is moving beyond commitments, targets and reporting to becoming increasingly operationalized across business – influencing strategy, investment, innovation and long-term value creation – which rightfully places sustainability closer to the core of commercial decision-making.

A central theme is that the strongest progress will be achieved where sustainability outcomes and business value reinforce one another. CSOs recognize that policy uncertainty, geopolitics and the inflationary environment have increased the near-term pressure on the execution of their sustainability strategies. But this pressure may ultimately make sustainability stronger – shifting it from a commitment to a capability enabler for growth, competitiveness and resilience.

As a core topic for Standard Chartered, it was especially heartening for me to see adaptation rising rapidly on the agenda. Over 80% of those surveyed expect greater global focus on adaptation in the year ahead, and over 75% believe private sector investment will help adaptation scale. And on the ever-present topic of AI, overwhelmingly the group feel that it, and other digital technologies, will aid their progress, while recognizing the trade-offs presented by their environmental and social challenges.

Net net, the takeaway from the survey is one of pragmatic optimism. The current environment may be making progress harder in some places, but it is also sharpening the focus on what makes sustainability durable: embedding it in business strategy, building resilience and directing capital toward solutions that can deliver both impact and long-term value.

I have every confidence in this collective and committed group of WEF sustainability leaders to make this happen.

As sustainability becomes increasingly embedded in how businesses create value, CSOs have a unique opportunity to understand how markets and consumer behaviours are changing and translate those insights into new opportunities for growth, resilience and innovation.

At Mastercard, we leverage our core capabilities to help turn more sustainable choices into action at scale, bringing together payments, data, technology and partnerships to make those choices easier to access, use and repeat.

The Mastercard Economics Institute gives us a unique view into spending trends. For example, helping us understand where second-hand, reuse and rental models are gaining traction, how behaviours vary across generations and markets, and where circular commerce may be headed next. Our recent report, The Next Era of Conscious Consumption, found that in the top 20 circular shopping economies, second-hand clothing sales increased 28% year over year in 2025, compared to 8% growth in clothing stores. CSOs need to capitalize on these shifts toward more sustainable spending and innovate across their businesses to deliver new value.