It’s been 20 years since I founded one of the sustainable business field’s major leadership networks and industry catalysts, seeking to bring leaders and other professionals from across sectors in dialogue and common purpose. Now, in 2026, sustainable business finds itself in an uncomfortable but important moment.
Over the last two decades, many companies came to recognize something they once resisted: environmental and social pressures do not stay neatly outside the walls of business. Climate disruption affects factories and freight routes.
Energy volatility reshapes operating costs, while geopolitical conflict can ripple through supply chains within days. What once looked like “external” issues increasingly became operational realities.
But the conclusion forward-looking companies rightly reached was even deeper than that: they had to make sustainability core to their very brand. As sustainability became seen as a key business resilience driver, leaders embedded it across their organizations while actively engaging consumers in the process. The goal was to change not just operational procedure but how companies generate revenue and attract customers, shifting from an extractive, short-termist model to one that prioritizes long-term durability. That’s what my leadership network has believed for two decades, and what has underpinned our work.
Now, despite those hard-learned lessons, some organizations appear hesitant, if not resistant. Political backlash, economic pressure and renewed demands for immediate over long-term ROI visibility have created an environment where firms are retreating into narrower and more defensive thinking. Sustainability teams in some organizations are being confined to compliance and reporting functions instead of strategic leadership and core brand identity. That would be a serious misreading of where business risk actually stands.
The last 20 years demonstrated repeatedly that companies cannot separate long-term business performance from the health and stability of the systems around them. The current conflict in the Middle East and the resulting pressure on global energy markets offer another reminder that no company can fully insulate itself from broader systemic realities, regardless of the political moment. These pressures do not disappear simply because sustainability has become a more contested public conversation.
Twenty years ago, sustainability was still widely treated as adjacent to core business operations. Then came years of disruption – consumer and political backlash against shareholder capitalism, accelerated extreme weather and other environmental events, and the ever-present dangers of supply chain disruption turbo-charged by the COVID-19 pandemic – that exposed how interconnected modern business risks had become.
In response, many companies evolved, sometimes faster than public perception acknowledged.
Today, sustainability is increasingly connected to operational resilience, energy strategy, procurement, innovation, and long-term value creation. Recent research from our network on the evolving role of the Chief Sustainability Officer reflects that shift:
Those are meaningful indicators of progress. But the research reveals a more mixed picture for sustainable business:
The question is whether sustainability expertise has become integrated deeply enough into the language and logic of business itself. And the evidence says on the whole, it has not.
One of the defining leadership challenges of the next decade will not simply be generating more sustainability data or announcing more commitments. It will be translation.
A generation of sustainability professionals emerged with deep expertise in environmental science, reporting frameworks, climate targets, and social impact. That expertise remains essential. But increasingly, sustainability leaders are expected to communicate in terms of operational resilience, energy security, supply chain durability, financial performance and strategic growth. In many organizations, that transition is still incomplete.
Too often, sustainability expertise still operates adjacent to core business strategy and brand identity rather than inside them. Sustainability leaders may understand climate risk deeply, for instance, but struggle to connect those risks directly to capital allocation, procurement decisions, operational continuity or long-term enterprise value.
The most effective sustainability leaders today are not only technical experts. They are systems thinkers and business translators who can connect environmental realities to operational and financial priorities while looking to transform entire revenue models to last over time.
Some companies may be tempted to interpret today’s political and economic pressures as justification for slowing down. But the underlying drivers that pushed sustainability into the mainstream have not disappeared.
Climate disruption continues to affect infrastructure, agriculture, energy systems, insurance markets, and global logistics. Biodiversity loss is increasingly recognized as a systemic economic risk. Supply chain instability remains a persistent challenge. Consumers still expect companies to act responsibly, even if the language surrounding sustainability has become more politically contested.
The companies that succeed over the next 20 years will likely be those that treat sustainability not as a peripheral exercise or cyclical trend, but as part of their brands’ innovation approach, operations and daily behavior. That requires leaders who can bridge sustainability and finance, environmental priorities and operational realities, long-term systems thinking and near-term business decisions.
Most importantly, it requires businesses to remember what the past two decades already taught them: long-term business value and broader societal resilience are deeply connected.
That lesson remains just as relevant today as it was 20 years ago.
KoAnn Vikoren Skrzyniarz is founder and CEO of Sustainable Brands, a global network focused on advancing sustainable business and brand innovation. She has worked with corporate leaders across industries for more than two decades on integrating sustainability into business strategy.
