Sustainability and regeneration describe two levels of project performance, and most organizations have governed for neither. Sustainability is the floor. It means operating within environmental and social thresholds, reducing harm, and meeting the disclosure standards that now set a measured level for that performance. The ISSB framework was built as a global baseline for sustainability-related disclosure, and in Europe the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive requires companies, including non-EU firms with significant European operations, to report environmental and social impact under mandatory standards that carry an audit requirement. Regeneration is the level above the floor, where a project returns more environmental, social, and economic value than it consumes and carries that contribution as a commitment with evidence behind it. The floor is becoming a measured requirement while the goal remains, in most organizations, a stated intention without the structure that would reach it.

The verification bar rises, it does not fall

The move from the floor to the goal raises the verification requirement. Meeting the floor can be satisfied by reducing an impact and reporting the reduction. Reaching the goal requires a project to set net-positive targets, assign authority to enforce them, and produce traceable evidence that the contribution occurred. The standard that defines regeneration is explicit about this. It rests on shared governance, transparent accountability, and evidence that the project returns more than it consumes. A net-positive claim, that a project restored more habitat than it disturbed or generated more energy than it used, has to be verifiable against a baseline through independent assurance. The higher the level an organization sets, the more its credibility depends on project-level data that is owned, governed, and traceable.

Most organizations have not governed the floor

The figures show that most organizations have not yet governed the floor, which places the goal out of reach. In PMI and GPM research across nearly 1,600 professionals in 35 countries, 79 percent said sustainability drives long-term success for their organization, while 41 percent reported full integration across projects and functions. Only 20 percent of project professionals were extremely confident in achieving their sustainability targets, and the research recorded a 42 percentage point gap in confidence between sustainability executives and the PMO leaders responsible for delivery. Fifty-eight percent said sustainability makes projects cost more, and 40 percent qualified as skeptics. These figures describe a decision structure in which sustainability requirements exist without a named decision authority and without a gate that can hold a project when those requirements are not met. An organization that cannot enforce the floor has no mechanism to reach the goal above it.

The value is measurable when the structure exists. PMI's 2025 Project Success research found that projects carrying environmental, economic, and social sustainability benefits together scored 43 points higher on its Net Project Success Score than projects carrying none, and that projects prioritizing sustainability and social impact reach close to double the average success rate. That return is available to organizations that can instrument these outcomes at the project level. It is not available to organizations that hold the commitment in their reporting while the data that would support it is neither collected nor governed.

The goal carries more exposure than the floor

A regeneration claim is a stronger statement than a compliance statement, and it draws more scrutiny from regulators, investors, and communities because it asserts a measurable gain that a compliance statement does not. When such a claim is assembled from project activity that no one owns, it presents a position the underlying records cannot support. The UN Global Compact and Accenture 2025 CEO study found that 99 percent of chief executives intend to maintain or expand their sustainability commitments and 88 percent believe the business case is stronger than five years ago, while only 35 percent of the Sustainable Development Goal targets are on track and 2024 was the first calendar year to pass the 1.5 degree threshold set in the Paris Agreement. Ambition is rising while the systems that would verify it remain unbuilt.

The sequence most organizations skip is the one that matters. Regeneration is set as the intended outcome before the floor beneath it is governed, before a named authority enforces the threshold, before a gate can hold a project that fails it, and before the project data feeding any claim traces back to an owner. Sustainability has to be governed as a baseline before regeneration can function as a goal. Until that order is established, the higher target will continue to describe performance the project records were never structured to verify.

*Sources: PMI and GPM, Executing Sustainability Strategy: When Ambition Meets Reality (survey of nearly 1,600 professionals across 35 countries); PMI 2025 Project Success Survey; UN Global Compact–Accenture 2025 CEO Study; GPM net-positive and regenerative definitions; ISSB and CSRD/ESRS disclosure standards.*

By Joel Carboni

Keywords: Project Management, Sustainability

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