Sustainability Legislation, and the Need to Step Up.

On 13th November 2025, the EU Parliament met and decided on a final position on the CSRD & CSDDD omnibus, which was an effort to simplify the two pieces of sustainability legislation in the EU for adopting countries.

As seen in the table below, the two directives have been diluted by quite some margin.

The EU CSRD still remains one of the most rigorous approaches to sustainable disclosures in the world. However, the ambition of who had to disclose is now far more limited than previously thought. In 2023/24, the directive looked to have 50,000 companies within the EU and abroad disclosing; this has now reduced to around 5,000.

CSRD

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The desire to dilute the package has been contentious. The capital, resources and time that the disclosures take are heavy on the shoulders of many companies’ compliance and capital teams — however, when looking at the science, they are essential.

Dilution of the disclosure has come around due to these factors. Many companies found the requirement of audited emissions data and the complexity of the double materiality section of the disclosure difficult to truly achieve.

Whilst this helps companies protect profit in the short term to a degree, almost all of the science points towards extreme and untraceable weather patterns which will create a environment of trade almost impossible to predict. This is clearly shown in the fact that extreme weather events have cost global trade over $2 trillion in the last decade, rising year on year, and resulting in events such as Hurricane Melissa, which will result in damages to Jamaican infrastructure worth 41% of the country’s 2024 GDP (1), or the 2022 Pakistan floods that caused $14.8 billion in damages (2).

CSDDD

Alongside CSRD, the reduction in reporting requirements for CSDDD has been even more extreme, with financial boundaries more than doubling and employee thresholds increasing fivefold.

CSDDD was introduced to increase understanding and accountability of companies’ environmental and social impacts. Whilst CSDDD was going to be a strain on many companies’ supply chain and due diligence reporting, it is designed to shed light on issues such as slave labour, child labour and modern slavery (amongst other areas), which have seen atrocities such as the Rana Plaza collapse where 1,134 people died and 2,500 were injured (3), or the chocolate industry where estimates suggest around 2 million children are forced to work in cocoa plantations, with 800,000 adults being paid $2 a day (4).

What Does This Mean?

Much of the push back on both CSRD & CSDDD was, arguably, justified. Many companies captured in the disclosure boundaries would have had to develop systems, processes and departments that they had not fully comprehended, and many companies stepped up to the challenge. However, the timeframe of reporting seemed too much for many companies to get it right ‘first time’, though these audits were not expected straight away due to a limited assurance grace period — so that is not necessarily a valid argument. Saying all of this, CSRD was highly ambitious, but it was an ambition that the world needed and set the standard for many other disclosures.

With this, we need to understand that the delays and dilution have come around because of lobbying and a desire by companies with a vested interest in keeping the status quo as it is. This presents significant problems as we face the science that contradicts every step of dilution and delay.

Other Legislation

In other areas of the world, climate disclosures are fast coming into effect or reporting years are being placed into mandatory requirements by governments. The International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) has been adopted by 36 jurisdictions either as current standards or being brought in within the next few years, both mandatorily and voluntarily (5). This disclosure differs from CSRD in a few ways; the most significant is around the materiality assessment, with many jurisdictions choosing to only financially disclose their sustainability impacts and measures, as well as reviewing the impacts on the environment and communities in which they operate. Globally, this has become the most widely adopted legislative approach.

Another notable example is California SB 253/261, which has also been delayed recently: “as the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an order staying California's climate-related financial risk reporting law (SB 261) pending a hearing on the merits of an appeal challenging the lower court’s denial of a preliminary injunction related to the law. That hearing is scheduled for January 9, 2026. The order does not halt SB 261's companion greenhouse gas emissions reporting law, SB 253, which is also being challenged before the Ninth Circuit.” (6).

Again, this has come around due to companies advising they feel unprepared for the disclosures, whilst lobbying and government officials with vested interests have also intervened, much like Europe.

What is the Impact of These Delays?

The impact of climate change and social issues is now without question. There are significant pieces of scientific research and evidence that we can rely on, generated by leading scientists around the world, to reduce political influence and be held up to the highest levels of scientific rigour and peer review.

These include the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Potsdam Institute’s Planetary Boundaries, Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics (built on the back of the planetary boundaries), and the World Economic Forum.

As the world looks to these institutions, the message is clear and resolute: humanity’s future is facing extreme pressure from our natural world, infrastructure and social frameworks.

Increasingly divided political parties, with little middle ground, are predicted within the socioeconomic pathways model, which suggests that with increasing threat of climate change, countries develop either very right‑wing or left‑wing views. The World Economic Forum image above, showing 2‑year and 10‑year estimates for risk around the world, highlights these scenarios in detail, whilst not even being linked in research or faculty.

In the near term, fear of impact and resource depletion drives nations apart, leaning into longer‑term vulnerability to natural disaster. The solution is the opposite: collaboration on all fronts to protect global GDP from dropping by an estimated 12% per degree increase (7).

As with the World Economic Forum, the Planetary Boundaries 2025 report image below shows an overshoot of 7 of 9 recorded boundaries, whilst Doughnut Economics 2025 highlights significant social decline in most areas recorded throughout the world.

The Future for the Global Mobility Space

According to a 2024 article review of global mobility by William Russell (8), South Korea, Colombia and Chile have seen some of the highest increases in global mobility volume in the last 10 years, whilst Australia and Switzerland remain the top for current expat populations.

These are countries currently tackling climate change and social issues, which could have impacts on expat populations and business. For example, whilst Chile has 70% renewable energy (9), it is now facing surface water decline of over 20%, with 50% of the population living in water‑starved conditions(10).

This kind of situation is true for countries around the world, and as extreme weather conditions continue to escalate, so does cost. This is seen in places like the Panama Canal, where shipment transit has had to be cut from 50+ a day to 32, with companies resorting to jumping the queue. This impacts not only the cost of transit but the cost of products as well. For example, Avance Gas was recorded as paying US $2.4 million in late August 2024 to skip the long waiting line (11).

The future of the mobility industry relies on forward‑thinking and development of sustainable services. 

“An estimated 216 million people could migrate internally by 2050 due to slow-onset climate impacts, although climate and development action could cut this by 80 percent” (12)

Alongside this, over 800 million people have been displaced due to climate change in recent years. The mobility industry, with its experience and infrastructure, has the ability to not only be a solution to the future issues of climate change and population displacement, it can embed itself in the future of humanity and develop the change needed to support our children having one, and running the businesses that have defined a generation of relocation.