Portuguese companies have been observed over the past four years in a systematic, rigorous, and in-depth manner. During a period marked by successive crises, including the pandemic, wars, inflation, geopolitical fragmentation, uncertainty, and growing regulatory pressure, it would have been reasonable to expect sustainability to be pushed to the margins of corporate strategy. Some argue that the “sustainability trend” has already passed. However, the data reveal a different reality. Sustainability has firmly entered the strategic vocabulary of companies and has become an integral part of the debate on competitiveness, risk, and value creation. This is what the data from the SDGs Observatory in Portuguese Companies show, the results of which will be presented next March at CATÓLICA-LISBON. As recently noted by John Elkington, the British professor who coined the term “tripple bottom line: people, planet and profit”: “If we step back far enough and look with some distance, we may be witnessing the end of the beginning of the sustainability market as we know it. The implication is clear: instead of sustainability remaining a ‘nice to have’, it will end up being embedded in everything companies do.”
Other data also point in this direction. Accenture and the UN Global Compact published a study in September 2025 showing that 97% of CEOs surveyed globally state that they are aligned with the priorities of the Sustainable Development Goals, and 88% see a clear business case for sustainability. In turn, Bain & Company’s study The Visionary CEO’s Guide to Sustainability 2025 reveals that 54% of CEOs worldwide now refer to sustainability not as corporate social responsibility, purpose, or public communication, but as a way of doing business.
However, these studies also show that 92% of leaders consider the existence of global governance and political unity to be critical for the Sustainable Development Agenda to progress positively. This finding aligns directly with the implementation of SDG 16, Peace and Strong Institutions, which, as we can see, is under threat in a fragmented and unstable international context.
The current reality is therefore dual. On the one hand, the private sector has already understood that the effective and successful operation of businesses requires sustainability to be a decision-making criterion and a core part of corporate strategy and operations. In fact, it is the only viable way of doing business in the medium and long term. On the other hand, some global powers, once united in 2015 around common goals such as the SDGs or the Paris Agreement, now appear to favour self-centred approaches and the destruction of global value, despite this being an obviously losing strategy for all involved in the medium and long term, as highlighted by Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada, in his speech at the World Economic Forum last week. Perhaps for this reason, citizens increasingly place their trust in companies rather than governments to deliver the changes the world needs, reflecting a profound weakening of democratic systems.
The question we face today is not what should be done, but how to do it. It is not whether sustainability is fundamental to prosperity. It is prosperity.
How, then, can we build the future of global governance that is needed, keeping companies at the centre of action while their businesses continue to prosper? If political power lies with states, economic power lies with companies. Is this power sufficient to drive the changes the world urgently needs, at a time when we are crossing yet another planetary boundary and when wars, genocides, and threats to human rights continue to spread?
To address these questions, and many others equally pressing, the Center for Responsible Business and Leadership will organise the event “Agenda 2030: Past or Future?” in March 2026. This event will provide a space to question, discuss, and debate these issues, while also presenting the data from the SDGs Observatory in Portuguese Companies. It represents a collective effort by Universidade Católica, together with the Portuguese private and public sectors, to build a shared prosperity agenda capable of responding to today’s challenges. Because the results of the observation are clear, and now, they call for action.
Filipa Pires de Almeida, Executive Director of the Center for Responsible Business and Leadership at CATÓLICA-LISBON