It seems that every few weeks another household name is making the news for rethinking where sustainability sits inside the business, with several companies restructuring sustainability leadership over the past year. Each time, the same question follows: is corporate sustainability shrinking, or simply changing shape? CECP’s own member data suggests it is mostly the latter, though a meaningful share of companies are genuinely pulling back.
What the numbers show
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- CECP’s July 2026 Pulse Survey asked 640 respondents from affiliated companies whether their company had changed where its sustainability or ESG teams sit in their organization since January 2026.¹
49% report some shift in how the function is positioned or resourced since January 2026 (17% integrated into another department, 17% reduced in scope, staffing, or budget, and 15% eliminated sustainability as a standalone team). - 37% report no major organizational movement (22% say the function had not moved and is still elsewhere in the company, while 15% say it has not been restructured).
- 14% are unsure.
- CECP’s July 2026 Pulse Survey asked 640 respondents from affiliated companies whether their company had changed where its sustainability or ESG teams sit in their organization since January 2026.¹
That mix is worth paying attention to. Integration and downsizing are the most common forms of restructuring, while more than a third of companies are holding their structures steady. In other words, sustainability work is being reevaluated, and companies are taking differentiated approaches.
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- Trellis’s State of the Sustainability Profession 2026 survey adds insight at the team level:
46% of companies increased sustainability headcount and budget over the past two years, while 25% cut them. - Visibility has shifted even where budgets have not; 63% have scaled back sustainability communications.
- Trellis’s State of the Sustainability Profession 2026 survey adds insight at the team level:
What CEOs are Prioritizing
The restructuring trend makes more sense when viewed through the lens of CEO priorities rather than sustainability teams. IBM’s 2026 CEO Study, which surveyed 2,000 CEOs across 33 countries, found that environmental sustainability fell from the sixth-ranked CEO priority in 2024 to eighth in 2026, falling behind profitability and speed of execution.
This is not a signal that CEOs have abandoned the issue. For most, it reflects a reordering of immediate urgency, not values. But it does help explain why sustainability functions are being asked to prove business relevance more directly than ever before, and why more sustainability units are finding themselves embedded within finance, legal, or risk rather than operating as a standalone unit.
The better question for leadership is not where sustainability sits on the org chart, but whether the function has real mandate. Restructuring in a way that distributes authority across the business can strengthen outcomes, but restructuring that disperses responsibility without budget or accountability does the opposite.
What sustainability leaders can do
If profitability and speed of execution are now what move the needle for CEOs, sustainability leaders need to speak that language. Several CEOs have argued in a recent HBR article that sustainability proposals stall not because they lack merit, but because they are framed in terms that do not match how senior leaders allocate capital. Impact measurement and materiality do a great job of communicating with stakeholders, but decisions made within the business are made based on cash flow, risk reduction, and return on investment. Reporting frameworks are focused on an enterprises aggregate impact, but decisions are often made at the project level. Sustainability leaders who can bridge that gap, connecting specific actions to business outcomes, are better positioned to make meaningful impact, regardless of where they sit on the org chart.
CECP’s member network, benchmarking data, and peer insights exchanges offer sustainability leaders the context and connections to make that case more effective inside their own organizations. Learn more at cecp.co.
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¹Chief Executives for Corporate Purpose, Pulse Survey, July 2026 ESG Team Structure Changes: July 6, 2026 – July 13, 2026.