The inaugural Chief Sustainability Officers’ Outlook captures the perspective of 103 members of the World Economic Forum’s global Chief Sustainability Officers Community on how the transition is unfolding. Overall, 63% expect progress to hold steady or accelerate over the next year, while over the medium term, a stronger business case and cheaper, more applicable technologies are the leading expected accelerators. At the same time, policy uncertainty, short-term pressures and geopolitical volatility are making progress more uneven across markets and sectors.
The outlook explores what this means inside companies: sustainability is moving deeper into commercial, operational and investment decisions; AI offers new execution capabilities alongside resource trade-offs; and adaptation is becoming a core question of resilience and capital allocation. Across these themes, the report points to a central challenge for chief sustainability officers and business leaders: translating sustainability into decisions that create value, strengthen resilience and can withstand changing economic, political and geopolitical conditions.