- How does each industry view sustainability? Is it a priority? It’s certainly not enough of a priority. But 2021 did see a positive increase across every industry—something to be grateful for. Sustainability must keep breaking into the priority lists of CEOs, boards, and all levels of organizational leadership. 2022 needs to turn priorities into transition plans and deliver on them. Both organizations and entire industries must align themselves to the global context that will dominate the next 50 years.
- We compared the responses to our Pulse Survey of G2000 enterprise leaders, across industries, on the priority given to environmental sustainability over the next 12-18 months. There are good signs: it’s on the up. It’s also on the up for diversity and supply chain resilience factors (which we assess here). These are certainly positive signs across the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors that make up sustainability and the 17 UN Goals.
- BUT environmental sustainability is only a top 3 priority for 29% of enterprise leaders going into 2022. There are standout trajectories in manufacturing, retail and CPG (consumer packaged goods), and travel, transportation, and logistics. As for the banking and financial services (BFS) and energy and utilities (E&U) industries, they need to take a hard look at themselves. Despite a small overall increase-–these latter two industries are foundations for the energy transition, the financing of all things sustainability, and much more besides; there’s an argument that sustainability has been on the BFS and E&U radars for some time, so a rapid increase in prioritization is less likely… however for less than 25% in both cases to see sustainability as a top 3 priority is criminal.
- More broadly, the insurance industry was battered by natural catastrophe payouts in 2021 and 2020, so expect their views on sustainability to head in only one direction. Healthcare, still dealing with the pandemic, unsurprisingly saw only a small increase. Life sciences saw a massive jump—albeit from a very low starting point. High tech and telecom continues its efforts to “green technology” and “use technology for green”, seeing a moderate increase in sustainability being prioritized (see our separate take).
The Bottom Line: Industries and the organizations that constitute them must align their transition plans to the global context of decarbonizing to net-zero and addressing all 17 UN Goals
Firms must collaborate with their competitors. They must collaborate with their supply chains. They must collaborate with all their ecosystem partners. Only then will industries be able to benchmark their existing impacts, monitor their progress, set goals and interim targets, and plan transition roadmaps. Less than 20% of organizations have the plan they need for sustainability as our separate data from our ecosystem mapping study shows. We’re running out of time to align.
