PHILADELPHIA, PA — A new global study from Project Management Institute (PMI) and Green Project Management found a significant gap between corporate sustainability goals and organizations’ ability to execute them, highlighting challenges that could affect long-term business performance and project outcomes.
The research found that 85% of sustainability executives are confident their organizations can achieve sustainability goals, compared with 43% of Project Management Office leaders and just 20% of project professionals who describe themselves as extremely confident.
The findings suggest sustainability has become a strategic priority for many organizations but remains unevenly integrated into day-to-day operations. While 79% of respondents said sustainability supports long-term organizational success, only 41% reported it is fully embedded across projects and business functions.
PMI said its research identified sustainability as the strongest predictor of project success, ranking ahead of traditional factors such as governance structures and project management methodologies.
The study surveyed nearly 1,600 professionals across 35 countries spanning private and public sector organizations.
Researchers identified six recurring obstacles to sustainability execution: difficulty measuring business benefits, weak integration into decision-making processes, unclear goals, competing operational priorities, limited visibility into how individual actions contribute to outcomes, and the long-term nature of sustainability objectives.
The report also found that 40% of respondents expressed skepticism about sustainability initiatives, raising concerns that implementation challenges may undermine support for sustainability programs.
“Projects built around sustainability succeed at nearly twice the rate of those that are not,” PMI President and CEO Pierre Le Manh said. “The challenge for leaders now, beyond embedding sustainability into strategy, is how to build the organizations to deliver on it.”
The study found that organizations with stronger sustainability outcomes typically share two characteristics: clear direction from leadership and operational capabilities that connect sustainability goals to project-level decisions and execution.
The report was released alongside the launch of the Certified Sustainable Project Professional (CSPP) credential, a certification program developed by PMI and Green Project Management. The program is designed to help project professionals incorporate sustainability considerations into planning, execution, risk management, and performance measurement.
“Sustainability progress lives or dies at the project level,” Green Project Management CEO Joel Carboni said. “The CSPP certification gives practitioners the rigor and the methods to make sustainability outcomes real rather than aspirational.”
The release comes as businesses face growing regulatory, operational, and investor pressure surrounding sustainability performance. According to the report, 88% of companies view sustainability as a driver of value creation, while organizations continue to contend with rising climate-related risks, expanding reporting requirements, and increasing energy demands from emerging technologies.
The full report, Executing Sustainability Strategy: When Ambition Meets Reality, is available at www.pmi.org.
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