KPMG report warns short-term thinking threatens sustainability progress

Short-term decision-making has become the biggest near-term threat to sustainability progress, according to a new WBCSD report developed with KPMG. The report says the pressure point is no longer just setting climate goals, but proving they can survive scrutiny in a world of tightening rules, mounting volatility and a growing backlash against sustainability.

The report, Safeguarding Sustainability: A Dynamic Risk Assessment for the Sustainability Agenda, uses KPMG’s Dynamic Risk Assessment method to map 20 interconnected risks shaping sustainable business transformation. It puts short-termism at the center of that network, warning that immediate pressures can crowd out longer-term sustainability decisions as economic pressure rises and trust in institutions erodes.

For KPMG consultants, auditors and advisory staff, that changes what sustainability work looks like inside a Big Four firm. Clients are not just buying strategy decks anymore. They are asking for help building the reporting processes, internal controls and decision routines that make sustainability data reliable enough to stand up alongside financial reporting. That shift matters in practice because it pushes ESG work toward the same standards that govern audit and finance: evidence, repeatability and accountability.

The report’s message also carries an employee-risk angle. When boards and leadership teams keep sustainability on the public agenda but let short-term cost pressure and quarterly targets dominate execution, the burden falls on the people asked to make the numbers work. In KPMG terms, that means more demand for teams that understand carbon data, ESG disclosures, governance over nonfinancial metrics and the controls needed to keep those processes defensible under review. It is the kind of work that rarely gets the spotlight, but it is where sustainability either becomes operational or stalls out.

WBCSD and KPMG frame the broader moment as one where sustainability is increasingly tied to enterprise value, but no one should assume progress is automatic. With 20 linked risks in play and short-termism pulling on nearly all of them, the report effectively argues that the real test for companies is not whether they can announce commitments, but whether their operating model can absorb the discipline needed to deliver them. For KPMG professionals, that is where the work gets harder, and where the reputational risk grows if the delivery gap keeps widening.