Businesses are increasingly developing climate resilience strategies to maintain growth and business performance in a disruptive world, a new report by Capgemini Research Institute has found.
The fifth edition of its report, A World in Balance 2026: The Resilience Reset, surveyed 2,100 senior executives from 701 organisations across 13 countries.
It found that close to nine in ten (87%) have reported climate-related supply chain disruptions, while three fifths (61%) believe water scarcity will become a greater constraint on business growth than energy availability within the next five years.
Business resilience
‘Water stress and scarcity, climate disruption, resource constraints, and geopolitical volatility have made business resilience transformation a necessity,’ the report noted. ‘Sustainability is now a discipline focused on crafting a climate resilience strategy to maintain growth and business performance rather than just a compliance checklist.’
As to the areas in which businesses are making investments, around two thirds (64%) of respondents said that they had revised their sustainability priorities, while 78% said they were integrating energy and resource resilience into business strategy.
Such investments are yielding business value, the report found – 69% of respondents reported positive ROI from their sustainability initiatives, with 67% reporting lower operating costs. Some 64% said that sustainability investments had contributed to increased sales.
Elsewhere, AI is increasingly being used to optimise supply chain resilience, and improve energy efficiency, strengthen reporting, and forecast climate risks, with 71% of respondents saying that they believe the benefits of generative AI outweigh its environmental impact.
However, the report also noted challenges in translating sustainability objectives into implementation, with the sustainability maturity index declining for a second consecutive year, and delays to net-zero objectives increasing.
Capgemini noted fragmented data, limited visibility across value chains and difficulties executing programmes at scale as continuing challenges.
Top priorities
The report highlights five priorities for business leaders seeking to build resilience into their sustainability strategies.
- Strengthen climate adaptation planning and water resilience across operations and supply chains
- Expand sustainability strategies beyond carbon reduction to include adaptation, resource security, and business continuity
- Focus investment on measurable, future-ready business resilience through efficiency, growth, innovation, and risk reduction
- Close the gap between ambition and execution through stronger data, governance, and operational capabilities
- Use AI for sustainability to deliver measurable progress while improving oversight of AI’s environmental impact
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