Why most businesses are still in reactive mode on sustainability and what it costs them

New research published this week finds that businesses, despite facing mounting climate related disruption, still overwhelmingly prioritize reactive firefighting over proactive, forward looking sustainability measures. The findings cut against the narrative that corporate sustainability has matured into a strategic function. What the data describes instead is a profession that spends more time managing what has already gone wrong than preparing for what is coming next.

The implications for ESG teams are practical and uncomfortable. A reactive posture means sustainability resources are consumed by incident response, stakeholder complaints, regulatory catch up, and disclosure corrections rather than being deployed toward long term risk reduction, supplier engagement, or science based target setting. For professionals working under CSRD double materiality frameworks, this mode of operation creates a structural problem: the ESRS standards require forward looking analysis of climate transition and physical risks, which cannot be produced on the fly when a disruption has already landed.

Procurement leads face a particular version of this trap. Supply chain disruptions are already increasing in frequency and severity, and a reactive procurement function that only begins mapping Scope 3 exposures after a disruption has occurred is always behind the curve. The gap between what buyers need from suppliers in terms of climate data and what suppliers can actually provide is one of the most persistent structural weaknesses in corporate sustainability programs. Automated supplier engagement tools that collect emissions data continuously rather than in annual bursts are one practical response to this gap, and platforms like SOMA operate precisely in this space, allowing procurement teams to shift from annual data scrambles to ongoing visibility.

The research also raises questions about resource allocation and board level prioritization. If climate risks are on the rise and proving increasingly disruptive for companies, as the research states, the business case for proactive investment should be strengthening. Yet the pattern of reactive behavior persists, suggesting that short term cost pressures and organizational incentive structures continue to override longer term risk logic. CFOs approving sustainability budgets need to weigh the cost of reactive crisis management against the cost of proactive infrastructure.

For sustainability consultants advising clients on program design, this research offers a useful diagnostic frame. Asking a client whether their sustainability function is primarily reactive or proactive, and then mapping their budget allocation, staff time, and reporting workflows against that question, can reveal misalignments that are not visible in disclosure documents. The regulatory direction of travel, from CSRD to SFDR to CBAM, consistently rewards companies that can demonstrate forward looking climate governance. Organizations still stuck in defense mode face growing risk that their disclosures will not meet the standard of ambition regulators and investors are beginning to demand.