The findings of BDO’s global sustainability survey, which drew responses from 41 countries, show that 96 per cent of organisations rated governance and ethical business practices as their top sustainability priority, while more than 75 per cent said they require support in almost every area surveyed. A further 43 per cent identified difficulties measuring and tracking impact.
Sustainability is no longer a question of awareness or ambition. For many organisations, the challenge is converting commitments into measurable business outcomes, with clear governance, credible data, and decisions that stand up to scrutiny from regulators, investors and customers.
The survey identified leadership engagement as the weakest area of implementation capacity, despite many organisations having access to the technical knowledge and capabilities required to advance sustainability initiatives.
From a leadership perspective, sustainability, particularly climate, cuts across multiple parts of the organisation: tax (including carbon taxation and incentives), people (including workforce expectations and DEI), operations and procurement (value-chain impacts), and resilience (physical climate risk). That breadth makes it harder to ‘identify, assign and complete’ in the way many transformation programmes are managed.
It is also inherently long-term, which can put it at a disadvantage when leadership bandwidth is consumed by urgent, fast-moving issues such as tariffs, trade disruption, geopolitical tension and AI-driven transformation. However, the latest World Economic Forum risk assessments show that environmental risks remain among the most significant long-term global risks.
The Irish findings broadly align with the global picture. Ireland recorded the highest proportion of survey responses, while Irish organisations appeared to have made stronger progress in establishing dedicated sustainability teams with executive oversight. Compliance with laws and regulations, followed by customer and stakeholder expectations, were identified as key drivers.
However, the survey also points to a challenge around consistency, with sustainability being considered in areas such as procurement, production and investment without necessarily being embedded across all decision-making.
Consistency is where there is still a gap. If compliance is the primary driver, the risk is that activity becomes ‘compliance-led’ rather than ‘performance-led’.
The wider sustainability agenda is also changing, with energy security, supply-chain robustness and business resilience increasingly coming to the fore.
Energy security has moved sharply up the agenda as geopolitical tensions highlight the strategic risk of fossil-fuel dependency. The winners will be those that diversify supply, invest intelligently in efficiency and renewables, and reduce exposure to volatile energy markets.
Supply chains have also become a board-level concern. Geopolitical risk, shipping disruption and concentration risk are forcing organisations to reassess supplier dependencies and logistics routes. At the same time, customer and regulatory expectations are pushing greater transparency on value-chain impacts, responsible sourcing, and traceability.
For Irish businesses, resilience is becoming increasingly tangible, with extreme weather demonstrating the potential financial and societal consequences of disruption.
Resilience is becoming the connecting thread. Organisations can see the operational and financial impacts of more frequent extreme weather and disruption. In Ireland, the cost is tangible, for instance, Storm Éowyn was the most expensive weather event in Irish insurance history in excess of €300m. These events affect not only the ‘E’, but also the ‘S’, as seen in societal impacts such as fuel-cost protests and disruption to communities and services.
Regulatory preparation remains important, particularly for organisations that paused work around CSRD.
Even with regulatory simplification, organisations should not interpret the direction of travel as ‘pause’. They should interpret it as ‘prepare smarter’. For Wave 2 CSRD reporters, while 2028 may feel distant, the preparation window is effectively now. Although some data points may be reduced, what remains is still significant and requires structured work across finance, operations, HR, procurement and risk.
For business leaders, the next step is to move sustainability out of the specialist function and into the core of corporate decision-making.
The parallel is health and safety: there is a function to support the agenda, but accountability sits with the whole organisation. The same is true for risk management in regulated industries, embedded into governance, controls and decision-making.
Content adapted from the Business Post.
