NORTHAMPTON, MA / ACCESS Newswire / February 6, 2026 / by Monica Molesag
Sustainability rarely took center stage at Davos this year. Instead, it quietly delivered by playing an implicit and influential role in most conversations throughout the week.
The major topics of geopolitical risk, artificial intelligence, and economic uncertainty consistently circled back to environmental exposure and long-term resilience, pointing to a broader shift: sustainability is becoming less of a separate agenda item and more an underlying consideration in enterprise risk and strategy.
For leaders looking to shape the next phase of business, two major and consequential themes emerged.
1. AI is a sustainability enabler with responsibilities
Artificial intelligence was central to many Davos discussions this year, including those touching on sustainability. The focus was less on experimentation and more on how AI is already influencing operational and strategic decisions.
In several sessions, leaders pointed to practical applications where AI, combined with sustainability and operational data, is helping organizations to reduce waste, improve resource efficiency, and better anticipate environmental risks.
At the same time, there was no lack of recognition that AI brings new challenges. Its growing energy and water requirements, along with questions around governance, transparency, and equity, featured prominently in discussions. Leaders emphasized the fact that AI's sustainability value depends heavily on how well it is integrated into existing business systems and decision-making processes, rather than deployed as a standalone technology. This was also underscored by broader analysis showing that emerging regulatory frameworks are struggling to keep pace with AI's environmental footprint and governance needs.
For many organizations, the focus shifted towards how responsible AI can support sustainability objectives while remaining aligned with enterprise governance and financial oversight.
2. Water is key to societal and economic stability
One of the most prominent sustainability topics at Davos 2026 was water. Across both formal and informal sessions, leaders discussed water and ocean health as a foundational element to stable societies, economies, and business continuity.
Much of the conversation focused on the growing gap between economic dependence on water and the level of investment dedicated to protecting and managing water systems. With a significant share of global GDP expected to be exposed to high water stress in the coming decades, participants highlighted the operational and financial implications for supply chains, production facilities, and communities. According to the World Economic Forum, 31% of global GDP could be located in regions of high water stress by 2050, underscoring the urgency of rethinking water investment and risk.
To this end, new collaborative initiatives were announced during the week, including efforts aimed at integrating water considerations more directly into corporate strategies and strengthening ocean stewardship across industries. For example:
Early-stage innovators were selected at Davos to boost water resilience across infrastructure, industry, and agriculture systems.
Public-private collaboration initiatives were launched to accelerate water finance and investment ahead of the 2026 UN Water Conference.
Research and alliance work was directed at bridging the €6.5 trillion global water infrastructure gap, and commitments were made to mobilize private capital and improve water resilience strategies.
These discussions signaled a move away from viewing water solely through a sustainability reporting lens and toward understanding it as a material risk and resilience issue for businesses.
What can business leaders take away?
While AI and water dominated the headlines at this annual meeting, sustainability quietly permeated most strategy meetings, with three takeaways arising as directional signals for leaders looking to build resilience into their business:
Sustainability is increasingly understood as financial risk
One of the clearest signals from Davos was the extent to which sustainability risks are now discussed in financial terms.
The World Economic Forum's Global Risks Report 2026, released shortly before the meeting, reinforced this view by ranking environmental risks (including extreme weather and biodiversity loss) and critical changes to Earth systems among the most severe long-term global threats. The same report also highlighted that adverse outcomes from artificial intelligence are rising sharply in long-horizon risk rankings, reflecting growing concern about both technological and environmental disruption.
While geopolitical and economic issues dominated short-term attention at the annual meeting, environmental risks were consistently framed as persistent factors shaping long-term planning and resilience strategies.
Furthermore, the role of the CFO is also evolving to meet sustainability requirements, including reporting non-financial KPIs, managing plastic and carbon taxes, steering the business, and aligning business decisions with carbon and environmental cost trade-offs. SAP's carbon accounting and management solutions can provide the capabilities needed to address CFO sustainability priorities.
As SAP Chief Sustainability & Commercial Officer Sophia Mendelsohn noted during the week, "Sustainability remains firmly planted in both the Davos agenda and the minds of the CEO and CFO. The reality of climate change persists-both its risks and opportunities, and they are already showing up on the balance sheet."
For many executives, this framing reflects how sustainability considerations are increasingly influencing investment decisions, insurance strategies, and assessments of long-term enterprise value.
The focus is shifting from ambition to execution
Davos discussions also underscored a growing emphasis on execution. While sustainability remains firmly planted in the C-suite agenda, many leaders acknowledged a gap between ambition and implementation.
Despite years of commitments and target-setting, fewer than one in five companies have implemented climate adaptation and mitigation measures at scale. This is a persistent action gap that helps explain why sustainability strategies are now evaluated more closely through the lens of financial feasibility, operational readiness, and data credibility.
In an environment where sustainability investments compete with other priorities, including AI and digital infrastructure, leaders emphasized the need for clear business cases and measurable outcomes. Sustainability initiatives that can demonstrate value creation and risk reduction are more likely to secure long-term support.
Integration decides whether sustainability insights lead to action
Data availability is no longer the primary challenge for most organizations. The tools to measure emissions, water use, climate exposure, and supplier impacts are widely accessible. What remains difficult is turning that information into decisions.
Across Davos, there was broad agreement that sustainability data needs to be integrated into core business systems for planning, procurement, asset management, and finance. When sustainability information sits outside these systems, it tends to inform reporting rather than operational or strategic action. When it is embedded, it can support more forward-looking decisions around resilience, investment, and supply chain design.
This shift toward integration reflects a broader understanding that sustainability efforts are most effective when they are aligned with how the business already operates.
SAP's ERP-centric, AI-enabled approach connects business and sustainability data to help give full visibility across a company's value chain, enabling it to align business objectives with sustainability priorities across areas like material choice, efficient transport and distribution, improved asset performance, and reduced carbon impact.
Davos 2026 clearly reflected a maturing phase of the sustainability conversation, one that is less about visibility and increasingly about how organizations can confidently prepare for the decade ahead.
For business leaders shaping sustainability strategies, there is a pressing need to make plans financially grounded, operationally integrated, and supported by reliable data.
Enterprise systems play an important role in this transition. When sustainability information is connected across business functions, leaders gain clearer insight into risk and opportunity, supporting more resilient and informed decision-making.
Monica Molesag is global head of Sustainability Communications at SAP.
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View the original press release on ACCESS Newswire:
https://www.accessnewswire.com/newsroom/en/computers-technology-and-internet/at-davos-2026-sustainability-was-everywhere-just-not-in-the-headl-1134559
