In 2026, the chief sustainability officer (CSO) is no longer just grappling with carbon metrics and supply chains. The role itself feels increasingly fragile.
As companies confront market volatility, geopolitical shocks and intensifying cost pressures, sustainability leaders are being asked to prove their value in tougher, more politicised boardrooms – or risk being sidelined. High-profile exits and restructures have fuelled anxiety that the CSO role could be diluted, folded into other functions, or scrapped altogether.
At the same time, expectations have not eased. Budgets are tightening even as regulatory demands expand across Asia Pacific. Sustainability is now increasing everyone’s job as companies integrate the function across the organisation, yet many CSOs worry that capability, accountability and ambition are not spreading fast enough beyond their teams. Add to this the risk of supply chain inertia and reporting fatigue, and the job can feel like a balancing act with no safety net.
Darian McBain, the former CSO of Monetary Authority of Singapore and Thai Union, who started her own consulting venture in 2023, says that the frothiness of environmental, social and governance (ESG) mania from 2021/2022 has dissipated, and committed organisations are quietly continuing by taking action. But those that appointed CSOs just for optics have dropped commitments or are maintaining a “compliance-only mindset”.
Eco-Business spoke to CSOs and sustainability consultants to get a sense of the issues that will keep the corporate conscience awake at night this year.
The vanishing job
Cathay Pacific majority owner Swire was among those firms cutting the sustainability head role. Image: Thai Nguyen/Flickr
Companies including Apple, Nike, HSBC, Unilever, and, at the start of the year, Hong Kong-headquartered conglomerate John Swire & Sons, have parted ways with sustainability heads – some, like Swire, Apple and HSBC without naming a successor as the role was scrapped.
The shrinking budget
Many sustainability teams are being asked to do more with less, or are seeing roles consolidated into finance, risk, or operations, according to Kaushik Sridhar, CEO of Australia-based consultancy Orka. “The risk isn’t just smaller teams – it’s that sustainability becomes compliance-led rather than strategy-led if capability is hollowed out,” he noted.
CSOs not facing budgets cuts are being told to be more cautious in their spending, and ensure better return on investment, said Christina Lee, founder of Singapore-based consultancy Global Green Connect.
Policy delay
Singapore’s five-year climate disclosure delay for most listed companies could be disruptive for CSOs committed to meeting requirements. Image: Robin Hicks/Eco-Business
Policy u-turns or delays to major pieces of sustainability legislation, such as the European Union’s corporate sustainability due diligence directive (CSDDD) and Singapore’s climate disclosure mandate, have been disruptive for CSOs running organisations committed to sustainability – particularly those at larger organisations that pooled resources early on towards meeting requirements.
These CSOs have found that their strategic advantage has been eroded, and worry about other regulations being hollowed out this year. But the proactive approach by companies in assessing the risks and opportunities of real world problems like climate change and biodiversity loss should be worth the effort in the medium and long term, said Sridhar.
Pressure to prove business value
CSOs are now under greater pressure to prove the business value of sustainability. Even companies that have long standing sustainability commitments are suddenly being asked to prove value of the function to the bottom line, said Steve Newman, CSO of Earthcheck, a consultancy. “We’re seeing the role increasingly judged not just against targets and reporting, but against near-term value creation. I think part of this is to be expected as sustainability draws on other traditional business roles to be accountable,” said Newman, adding that it is important for CSOs to be supported by the wider business rather than pushing the demand onto sustainability practitioners alone to prove the financial value of their role.
Market volatility
For CSOs working in real economy sectors like agriculture, instability in both markets and production continues to pose problems. Whether the instability comes from tariff changes, conflict, extreme weather events or political upheaval, there is no such thing as business as usual for most organisations with long value chains, McBain told Eco-Business. This is especially the case in Southeast Asia as many companies bridge regional and international value chains.
The risk in letting go
As sustainability starts to become everyone’s job, and the discipline starts to flow through other departments, CSOs worry that the finance, HR and operations guys now responsible for sustainability will veer off course. “How do I hand off parts of the business to somebody else to manage and lead, and have the confidence that the business will continue down the right path?” Anita Neville, chief sustainability and communications officer of Golden Agri-Resources told Eco-Business’ On the frontlines podcast.
Role uncertainty
As ESG responsibility shifts toward chief financial officer and enterprise risk functions, sustainability leaders are asking: what does my role become? The CSOs who stay the distance will be those who evolve into integrators and strategic advisors, rather than owners of a standalone function, Sridhar argued.
Greenwashing risk
Dr Thanyaporn Krichtitayawuth, UN Global Compact Network Thailand’s executive director, highlighted the trend of firms repeatedly shift or revise climate goals they cannot meet. Image: UN Global Compact
Though incidences of greenwashing have declined in recent years as firms become more hesitant in communicating their green credentials for fear of backlash, CSOs remain wary of the damage that exaggerated marketing campaigns based on flimsy or flawed data can do to a brand’s reputation. Greenrinsing – when firms repeatedly shift or revise climate goals they cannot meet – has emerged as a new form of greenwashing over the last year. “[The fear of greenwashing backlash] is driving a shift from storytelling to defensible, assured data – but it also increases pressure and personal risk for sustainability leaders,” said Sridhar.
ESG pushback
Even in Asia Pacific, where ESG backlash hasn’t been as loud as in the US, CSOs are feeling more cautious about increasingly cynical boardroom sentiment. “There’s concern about being caught between rising regulatory expectations on one side and growing scepticism or politicisation of ESG on the other,” said Sridhar.
Newman sees this caution translating into inaction while many CSOs wait to see how ESG pushback will play out in their context. “At the moment we can’t tell what the repercussions for doing nothing will be, and for some, if it’s worth the risk to proceed as the clock counts down to delivering on promises for 2030,” he explained.
Talent pipeline block
As a result of the rise in use of artificial intelligence (AI) to do labour-intensive jobs such as sustainability reporting, junior and mid-level staff are being deprived of the experience needed to progress in their careers. This is creating “massive talent issues” for CSOs, who are starved of the people they need to staff their teams, commented Paddy Balfour, Asia Pacific head of recruiting firm Acre. More needs to be done by industry and academe to develop mentorships in companies to give newcomers sufficient real-world experience, he added.
Nature knowhow
Biodiversity is a blind-spot for many CSOs, even in biodiverse Asia Pacific. Image: Robin Hicks/Eco-Business
Nature and biodiversity continues to be a blind spot for many CSOs – even in such a biodiverse region as Asia Pacific. The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework Target 15 requires companies to measure, map, set targets and disclose biodiversity risks the same as climate – and yet most have not begun this process, as they are still struggling with climate, observes Newman.
He expects that by the middle of 2026, biodiversity will become more prominent as key sustainability reporting standard ISSB has integrated nature disclosure framework TNFD. However, biodiversity remains complex for CSOs, as it is mostly non-traditional knowledge, and means data gaps and issues over metrics.
Skills gap
As sustainability becomes more embedded in the corporate structure, there’s growing anxiety that capabilities are not spreading fast enough across the organisation. CSOs are usually still the people who translate sustainability issues for those in finance, legal, and operations. As mandatory disclosure kicks in markets such as Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Hong Kong, the real bottleneck isn’t ambition – it’s a lack of ESG literacy among non-sustainability professionals that troubles CSOs, said Sridhar.
Overwhelm
Sustainability heads need to be able to hold the harsh truths of the job “loosely” or they will struggle. Image: David B/Flickr
One of the hardest things about the CSO job is the constant exposure to the inescapable realities of the planet’s demise. “You have to hold those truths loosely somehow,” said Neville. “You have to be able to be aware but not be overwhelmed by those truths. Otherwise you won’t move forward – and you won’t get anything done.”
If these feelings are not managed, CSOs risk burning out as they throw themselves into an ever-expanding role with little support. “I still hear of people leaving their roles because the pressure is put on them solely to deliver across all aspects of sustainability,” Newman noted.
Target trepidation
At a time when sustainability targets are coming under growing scrutiny – many companies, such as Coca-Cola, Unilever and HSBC have watered down or scrapped them altogether – how ambitious goals are is a constant concern. “If you stretch too far [with climate targets], you lose credibility. On the other hand, if you don’t stretch enough, we are not going to address the crisis in front of us,” the deputy chief sustainability officer of Hong Kong real estate Hang Lung Properties, John Haffner, said on an episode of On the frontlines.
Supply chain sluggishness
While the list of companies committed to sustainability continues to grow – more than 22,000 companies disclosed environmental information through Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) in 2025 – getting the supply chain on board continues to be a problem, said Venisa Chu, Asia Pacific sustainability director of L’Occitane, a B Corp-certified, Science-Based Targets initiative target-approved cosmetics firm with a vast network of suppliers in the region. “We have markets ranging from Korea to India. You can just imagine the differences in terms of the sustainability appetite and knowledge of the topic. [The biggest challenges are] getting them to understand the data requirements for basic ESG reporting, why it’s important and the purpose behind it.”
Newman added that supplier engagement is becoming a strategic long-term commerical programme not just a one-off survey, with growing pressure for credible transition plans that require collaboration with suppliers.
Data quality
A bottleneck for most CSOs as they work towards sustainability targets is data quality. This is a problem as CSOs must increasing prove business value and defend against greenwashing scrutiny and ESG pushback, according to Newman. Many businesses are still reliant on spreadsheets and manual processes, and need to invest in data architecture, metering, supplier platforms, internal controls to live up to expectations for data quality, assurance, controls and understanding live sustainability performance, he said.
Reporting fatigue
CSOs feel like they’re stuck in “perpetual reporting mode”. Image: Robin Hicks/Eco-Business
Even though the consolidation of the disclosure landscape that started in 2021 has made things somewhat simpler, and AI can do an increasingly amount of the reporting grunt work, a persistant drain on CSOs is sustainability reporting. “Many CSOs feel they’re stuck in perpetual reporting mode, leaving little time to focus on transformation or value creation,” Sridhar told Eco-Business.
Events season
There are enough distractions in the job [see reporting fatigue] without a tsunami of events to make getting things done that much harder. Forgetting the huge carbon, waste, and water footprint of most big conferences, CSOs say sustainability events are too often talking shops that do little to address the challenges they face, or worse, marketing platforms for speakers whose employers have paid to spout corporate messaging on stage. Even at good events, digital tools now make it easier to screen out awkward questions from the audience, which means that the elephant in the room can get quietly ignored by the moderator.
