Trends to Watch
How Geopolitical Pressure Is Redefining Sustainability
It seems that sustainability in 2026 is no longer just about alignment with global norms.
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Instead, it is seen as being about continuing to operate whilst surrounded by constraints, fragmentation and rivalry. It has moved from the corporate social responsibility (CSR) function to geopolitical risk management.
If efficient supply chains are seen as fragile, they are no longer seen as sustainable, as they risk breaking down and necessitating the use of alternatives. Therefore, redundancy becomes part of the supply chain. Similarly, political alignment is vital as shifts in policy can also disrupt supply chains, making them non-sustainable.
Apple has moved its manufacturing away from a single-country concentration to reduce the risks of geopolitical movement affecting its supplier networks. Another example is car manufacturer Volkswagen, which has regionalised its battery and component supply so that it can better manage energy, trade, and regulatory risks.
Sustainability needs a more precise definition as we move further into 2026 and the future. So, given the world’s very fluid geopolitical situation, a new definition for a sustainable supply chain would be: One that maintains its operations, even under sanctions, conflict or trade disruptions, even if operations become more expensive!
Countries and businesses are becoming more accepting of higher transition costs to reduce their exposure to blackmail or coercion in any form because clean energy is completely bound up with energy independence.
Ørsted offshore wind and energy infrastructure were changed to avoid or deflect supply chain and associated geopolitical pressures. It focused its market scope on politically stable areas of the world with high potential to minimise risk to its renewables business. At the beginning of 2025, British Petroleum rebalanced its energy strategy to improve its cash flow growth and reduce pressure from shareholders to improve profits and share price, taking a more cautious approach to green issues and reducing investment in renewables while increasing investment in oil and gas exploration.
Sustainable energy systems are now seen as those that can flex with geopolitical change without breaking, rather than those that can reduce emissions the quickest.
Businesses are no longer able to treat critical materials or resources as neutral inputs. The emphasis focuses on the security of access to the resources, the ability to have a plan B for resources or materials if a supply or resource is somehow blocked. In addition, the ability to close the circle of sustainability is viewed as important, too.
Tesla has long recognised their exposure to shifts in prices of the rare minerals that their cars require for batteries and electric motors. Therefore, their strategy has been vertical integration and the use of long-term agreements for the minerals they need to reduce their exposure to geopolitical movements. On the other hand, Rio Tinto is addressing the need for decarbonisation by producing the materials that are needed worldwide to accomplish it. However, they are not the only company doing so; therefore, they are competing with other companies across the globe to help businesses deliver decarbonisation. In addition, Rio Tinto has its own plans to be carbon neutral by 2030, part of which is using more renewable energy; its hydroelectric power for its smelters already makes it one of the cheapest aluminium producers worldwide.
The net result is that where the circular economy was originally seen as something green companies should aspire to, it is now part of a company’s risk mitigation strategy, not just a part of its environmental policy.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has reminded the world that assets, such as ports, utilities, data centres, and logistics, are essential for a country’s economy. Their degradation severely affects “normal” life. These assets have always been there, but they have now become strategic pillars of the economic continuation of a country.
Large companies like Maersk employ people like Mriganka Roy, a specialist in Supply Chain Resilience and Global Business Resilience, to keep a close eye on geopolitical changes, from the LA fires to the wars across the globe. Roy notes that the LA fires created a huge raft of information yet hardly affected supply chains, whereas civil unrest in Mozambique or the Democratic Republic of Congo is little known but affects the people of the countries involved.
The UK’s National Grid is continuing to invest in renewables and ensuring that the electricity transmission system is resilient and has redundancy as part of its £35bn RIIO-T3 investment plan, as climate change accelerates and security risks to its network, due to floods, snow and other risks, such as sabotage by other countries. For National Grid, sustainability becomes more about uptime and recoverability from the risks it foresees.
Now, sustainability is about understanding the geopolitical landscape, being aware of changes and being able to incorporate risk mitigation into long-term business planning.
Businesses need to be able to make trade-offs between their efficiency and resilience, which combines redundancy with planning that covers estimated risks. They need to have teams that are completely aware of sustainability and that incorporate it as part of their full business model to ensure that prospective and current geopolitical issues are covered.
The tariffs that Trump has implemented in America, the Russian-Ukrainian War, the Israel-Gaza conflict, the civil unrest in Yemen and several African countries, and the China-Taiwan tension show that stability cannot be guaranteed and interdependence is increasingly politicised. The geopolitical pressure means that businesses must adapt to deliver their goods and services to their markets. They must deliver despite the constraints imposed by constantly changing geopolitical pressure. However, this need for a flexible approach to handling geopolitical pressure does not eliminate environmental ambition. It has now become part of a company’s strategy, and company executives now need to ask whether their approach to sustainability can endure when the system itself is under continuous pressure.
