Dive Brief:
- The number of chief sustainability officers at United States-based publicly traded companies has declined 10% since last year, from 216 to 193, according to a new report from sustainability recruiting agency Weinreb Group. This is the first time this number has dipped since the group began tracking CSOs in 2011.
- The report found that the share of newly appointed CSOs has also dropped during this period, from 62% historically to 24% in 2026, suggesting that companies are not filling vacant positions, and fewer companies are creating new ones.
- However, sustainability budgets have largely increased or remained flat since the last survey, in January 2025, and sustainability team head counts have held steady at an average of 20 employees, according to the CSOs surveyed for the report.
Dive Insight:
In spite of this past year’s decline, the total number of U.S. CSOs has increased sixfold from 29 to 193 since 2011, per the report. Growth was especially rapid between 2021 and 2025, when the total number shot up from 95 to 216.
“The role grew substantially at a particular cultural and political moment in the early 2020s,” Weinreb Group Founder Ellen Weinreb wrote in the report’s foreword. “The recent decline may simply be a course correction, as companies committed to sustainability for the long term keep the role, while other companies change tack.”
Weinreb added that the decrease in CSO numbers should be seen as a “a single data point, not a trend.”
From the 69 CSOs that participated in the survey, 42% reported an increase in sustainability headcount outside their function to drive social and environmental progress, while only 28% said the headcount has increased inside their function. This suggests “the work is dispersing across the organization rather than disappearing from it,” per the report, which aligns with the current trend of creating new positions within the C-suite to carry out ESG work. In addition, 42% said their responsibilities have broadened, and 88% of CSOs said board engagement with sustainability has increased or stayed the same.
“A growing number of people inside and outside of the sustainability function are responsible for driving social and environmental progress,” Weinreb said.
Another change highlighted is that fewer CSOs are reporting to the CEO, dropping from about 33% historically to 14% in 2026, which the report said could reflect the role’s maturation. CEOs tend to be involved in establishing a sustainability function, but in time it naturally migrates to “where it can add the most value,” the report said.
On the flip side, an increasing number of CSOs are reporting to their company’s legal team, up from just 3% in 2011 to 23% in 2026, reflecting “a deepening connection between sustainability, corporate governance, and risk management,” per the report. In fact, when identifying how sustainability is creating value inside companies, most CSOs (62%) cited risk mitigation, with cost savings (52%) and brand reputation (38%) coming in second and third.
Regulatory pressure was also one of the main drivers of sustainability, cited by 57% of respondents. Customer or business partner pressure was the top driver, cited by 62%, with investor or shareholder pressure coming in third at 41%. CSOs said their top challenges were market and economic uncertainty (62%), regulatory requirements (57%), and geopolitical volatility (55%).
“While sustainability is facing headwinds, the field has built a powerful foundation,” Weinreb said in the report. “All signals point in one direction: sustainability is deeply rooted in business, and it’s delivering value.”
