Together for the 2025 Community Forum
After a politically turbulent 2024 in which many domestic strategic decisions were postponed, 2025 promises to be a year of ‘getting on with business’. Mandatory sustainability reporting begins in earnest in 2025, and the world has just five years to meet the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. The future of ESG will continue to be debated, so leveraging digital and AI to gather impact data will be critical to sustaining the “business case”. The Los Angeles wildfires this January are yet another reminder that climate change will continue to disrupt and dominate everything and should be part of everyone’s strategy, whether it’s social impact or supply chain procurement. COP 30 in Brazil at the end of the year will be a critical opportunity to bring renewable and nature-based solutions to business.
- Endurance Reimagined
Challenge: With geopolitical instability, supply chain disruptions and climate shocks, resilience isn’t optional—it’s essential.
Opportunity: Modernize sustainability by developing local supply chain partnerships and deploying digital tools and data collection that help lay the groundwork for inclusive growth. New frames measuring returns on sustainability indicates that companies with higher scores are better positioned for future financial performance. Mental toughness is also important to look at, as the scale of the challenges ahead is vast and cannot be tackled overnight or alone. Focus on progress over perfection.
Question: How can sustainability teams reimagine sustainability in 2025 – continuing to create the business case for ESG while meeting reporting requirements and still finding time to innovate?
- From Sustainable to Regenerative
Challenge: Driven by a mix of ecosystem disruption, resource scarcity and regulation, companies are reevaluating how they source, manufacture and package products.
Opportunity: Adaptation and creation of new, more circular production models – seen in the food, textile and consumer sectors, but still far from ‘business as usual’. The renewable energy boom risks repeating past harms without a focus on recovery – forced displacement, resource exploitation and biodiversity loss (IHRB). Initiatives such as dual materiality assessments required by new reporting standards and Natura’s integrated profit and loss statement can help change mindsets to recognize that business futures depend on: natural capital.
Question – How can regenerative, nature-based solutions become central to core business strategy in 2025 – and how can we use Brazil’s leadership in COP 30 to help us?
- Social and Environmental Goals Are Compatible
Challenge: Despite the retreat in some countries, businesses see DE&I and climate change as two key social impact priorities (hard worker).
Opportunity: Finding ways to align these efforts can open up unique opportunities for solutions both of them at the same time – as empowering diverse talent to lead climate solutions. Adaptation will also help to cope with trade-offs that may arise during the transition to a low-carbon economy and leave some people behind (for example, waste reduction options leading to job losses for small-scale farmers or farmers). employees).
The question is how can sustainability and social impact teams build more shared goals and strategies in 2025?
- The Power of Living Wages
Challenge: Last year, another 23 million people lived in extreme poverty and only 17% of the Sustainable Development Goals were met. (AND). Business Commission on Combating Inequality (BCTI) warned that global inequality now constitutes a systemic risk that undermines trust in economic and political systems, undermines social cohesion, and leads to unrest.
Opportunity: Living wages can change lives and unlock progress on the Sustainable Development Goals. More than 650 companies have committed to faster adoption (UNGC). New regulations such as the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Accountability Directive require measures on an adequate and living wage and equal pay for work of equal value, which will help close persistent gender pay gaps across the value chain. So while regulatory reporting consumes 43% of ESG budgets (IBM), seek to leverage these investments to innovate – while also creating scalable, subsistence value chains that support communities and businesses.
Question: What are the barriers to your organization adopting a living wage in 2025, and who still needs to be convinced?
- Collaboration is the new competitive advantage
Challenge: Achieving measurable impact requires sector- and system-wide responses, regardless of living wage, Area 3 reporting, or changes in social norms. However, global fragmentation and polarization, the backlash against ESG, and shrinking civil society space certainly make this difficult.
Opportunity: Key areas to focus on include launching industry-wide partnerships (eg The Mondra Initiative led by major UK supermarkets standardizing carbon footprints and using AI-driven technology for scope 3 emissions reporting); working with governments to overcome competitive challenges to enable more businesses to create direct business collaborations and collaborative solutions with local suppliers, workers and communities.
Question: How can cross-sector and cross-sector partnerships be more locally designed and managed in 2025?
