Around nine in ten corporate sustainability teams in the UK and Europe doubt their ability meet their short- and long-term sustainability goals, a new report by Leafr has found.
According to Leafr’s True State of Sustainability 2025 report, which surveyed more than 450 sustainability professionals across UK and European companies, just 11% of respondents believe that their organisation is ‘on-track’ to meet ESG targets.
This compares to 24% that answered likewise in 2024, and is despite a tightening of ESG disclosure requirements under the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and UK Green Claims Code.
Some two thirds of respondents to the survey were based in large or enterprise-level organisations, indicating the ‘pressures inside the companies responsible for the majority of corporate emissions and the most demanding disclosure obligations’, Leafr noted.
Key findings
Other findings from the study include that more than three quarters (76%) of respondents believed their corporate sustainability teams were not adequately resourced, while 91% said that they had been asked to work beyond their formal area of expertise.
More than seven in ten (72%) said that their corporate sustainability remit had expanded, 67% noted that their team was the ‘same or smaller’ than last year, while 62% cited budget constraints as a barrier to progress.
Notably, more than two fifths (42%) indicated a lack of c-suite engagement on sustainability matters, a figure that has doubled since last year.
‘Particularly concerning’
“That just 11% of respondents feel confident about delivering their long and, particularly concerning, short-term targets (25% in 2024) is sobering,” commented Mike Barry, co-founder, Planeatry Alliance.
“Despite the ESG backlash, many companies have retained their public targets but seem to be soft-pedalling on their delivery. The public holding of the sustainability targets line has been important and should not be underestimated in the current political climate, but the worry grows that the truly transformative action we need to respond to the conjoined and growing social and environmental crises is still stalled at the start line.”
Elsewhere, Gus Bartholomew, the co-founder of Leafr, a community of sustainability consultants, noted that the data confirms what its members hear every day.
“Sustainability teams cannot deliver net zero on their own,” he said. “They are under-resourced, pulled in too many directions, and forced into compliance work at the expense of impact. Unless leadership, regulators, and investors align behind a pragmatic model that values environmental outcomes as much as financial ones, targets will remain out of reach.” Read more here.
