Conclusion and recommendations

Sustainability remains central to organizational priorities, driven by its critical role in shaping resilient and future-ready organizations. However, momentum has slowed in 2025, due to a combination of challenges including economic, geopolitical, and operational pressures. To help organizations reverse this trend and advance sustainability efforts, we recommend the following targeted actions on the next page:

Recommendations

1

Strengthen the credibility of climate actions through demonstrable near-term measures:

Organizations can close the credibility gap by breaking down longer-term plans into measurable, achievable steps.

2

Build consumer trust through intuitive
consumer messaging:

This means simplifying sustainability information and providing context for claims, making it easier for consumers to understand and act on information.

3

Advance from climate adaptation strategy to operational preparedness:

Organizations should move beyond planning and proactively embed climate resilience into business execution.

4

Ramp up circularity to reduce resource dependency:

Organizations must scale up circularity across their value chains to reduce dependency on critical minerals and other key resources.

5

Invest in next-generation infrastructure to
enhance resilience:

To withstand intensifying climate risks, organizations must upgrade infrastructure for future conditions, for example by upgrading buildings and plants with resilient design features to strengthen long-term resilience, improve operational performance, and reduce lifecycle costs.

6

Transform and evolve functions to build
future-readiness:

Organizations need to shift from siloed operations to deeply collaborative ways of working where teams such as risk, strategy, finance, and operations work together to respond cohesively to complex challenges.

7

Enable sustainability progress through robust data systems and responsible AI

To accelerate sustainability progress, organizations must build robust data systems that connect sustainability indicators with operational metrics. Advances in data engineering and AI now make it possible to link diverse datasets and unlock insights at scale to adapt strategies. To ensure AI delivers sustainable business value, organizations must embed sustainability across the AI lifecycle and build robust governance frameworks to ensure ethical, transparent, and sustainable deployment.

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Organizations are reaffirming their commitment to sustainability
Sustainability is a core future-proofing strategy
Climate adaptation is a priority
AI is powering sustainability efforts
Organizational, structural, and geopolitical barriers to sustainability