Author: Elibeth Mora Vergara / Vice-Chair of the Sustainability Committee – Corporate Sustainability and Climate Action Manager, BDO in Panama
Sustainability is no longer a secondary matter and is establishing itself as a decisive factor in organizations’ strategy, risk management, and financial decision-making. What was once managed through environmental, social, or compliance initiatives is today recognized as a key element of resilience and long-term value creation.
In this context, the adoption of IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards S1 and S2 marks a significant change in the way organizations manage and report their performance. These standards promote an integrated view in which sustainability and finance are closely linked, prompting companies to identify which environmental, social, and governance (ESG) topics are financially material and how they can influence their strategy, performance, and ability to create value.
This shift calls for more active involvement from senior management and corporate governance bodies. Sustainability is no longer a stand-alone function and becomes a strategic element that must be part of business planning, enterprise risk management, and financial decision-making. To achieve this, reliable, traceable information that is useful for management purposes is indispensable.
The importance of this integration is evident in the results of the BDO 2025 Sustainability CFO Outlook Survey, which notes that organizations that incorporate sustainability into their business strategy report higher expectations for revenue and profitability growth than those that manage it reactively or separately from their core processes. This finding confirms that sustainability has become a key factor in strengthening corporate resilience and competitiveness.
Many organizations, however, still show significant gaps. The lack of integration among sustainability, corporate strategy, and risk management makes it harder to respond adequately to new regulatory requirements and to the expectations of investors, regulators, and other stakeholders.
Against this backdrop, early preparation represents a competitive advantage. The most advanced organizations are strengthening their corporate governance, linking material sustainability topics to their risk management processes, incorporating ESG variables into strategic and financial planning, and improving the quality of their data and information systems.
For companies that have not yet begun this process, the first step is not to produce a report, but to understand how sustainability factors can affect or strengthen their business model. That means identifying material topics, assessing risks and opportunities, integrating these aspects into corporate strategy, and strengthening the mechanisms for collecting and managing information.
Experience shows that organizations that move early and in a structured way not only reduce their exposure to risk, but also improve their ability to adapt, strengthen their resilience, and create greater opportunities for value creation. In an environment where sustainability is already part of the global financial language, the challenge is not deciding whether to act, but how quickly sustainability can be integrated into the heart of the business.
