New ICAS toolkit helps boards build effective governance regimes for sustainability

Fiona Donnelly CA, Director of Sustainability, on how this eight-step framework can bring long-term value to your organisation.

Governing sustainability isn’t simply about having the right committees and policies on paper; it is about ensuring that boards can make, oversee and challenge the decisions that shape long-term value creation.  

At ICAS, we’ve launched a new Sustainability Governance Toolkit which helps organisations address challenges and uncover value. By gaining practical guidance on where your organisation currently stands and where relevant action can be taken, accounting professionals, boards and governing bodies can strengthen oversight of sustainability. The toolkit was developed as part of an international partnership with the Metis Institute and the University of Dundee, translating original ICAS-funded research into a practical eight-step framework designed to help organisations assess their current sustainability governance arrangements, identify gaps and make improvements.  

The toolkit is grounded in evidence from interviews conducted during 2025 and 2026 with directors, chief sustainability officers, regulators, advisers and academics across the UK, Europe and Asia-Pacific. Three key themes emerged: 

• Board-level sustainability skills gaps are common and often unrecognised. 
• Sustainability governance is frequently disconnected from mainstream risk and decision-making processes. 
• The quality of sustainability metrics and targets is often inconsistent, with an unclear distinction between reporting performance and metrics to inform decisions.  

The toolkit arrives at a time when sustainability is under increasing scrutiny. Regulatory developments (many of which prioritise governance) and stakeholders’ demands continue to evolve across the UK, Europe and other global markets, increasing expectations for organisations to demonstrate robust governance over sustainability-related risks, opportunities and reporting. While many organisations have established sustainability structures, our research suggests that governance arrangements are often less effective in practice than they appear on paper.  

One former Chief Sustainability Officer described the broader picture as “a lot of ‘performative’ sustainability”, highlighting the importance of giving boards sufficiently robust information to challenge targets and assess progress. 

Rather than focusing solely on reporting and compliance, the toolkit encourages organisations to consider broader questions: how are sustainability-related decisions actually made, overseen and challenged? We found that sustainability governance arrangements can become fragmented, with important decisions often being taken outside formal sustainability structures in functions such as finance, procurement, investor relations and operations.  

To help organisations address these issues, users are guided through the topics that surfaced in the research as being most significant.  They include: clarifying what sustainability governance means for their organisation, understanding where decisions are made in practice, assessing governance capability, integrating sustainability into risk and decision processes, and examining incentives and culture.  

We designed the toolkit for organisations of all sizes and levels of maturity, and while it has a UK focus, it will be useful for other markets. It can be used by boards, audit committees, governing bodies and the professionals who support them. Each step includes a concise research summary, practical checklist with potential action as well as links to further publicly available resources, allowing organisations to prioritise the areas where improvement is needed most and take next steps.  

One of the clearest messages we took from our research is that sustainability governance should not sit alongside existing governance arrangements as a separate activity. Instead, organisations should embed sustainability into the same structures, processes and decision-making mechanisms used to manage strategic, financial and operational issues. Effective governance depends not only on having the right committees and policies in place, but also on ensuring that boards receive decision-useful information, have the skills and confidence to challenge it and understand its implications for long-term value creation. As one interviewee with regulatory experience warned, without that understanding a board can “totally miss the important points”. 

As sustainability considerations become increasingly integrated into business strategy, risk management and reporting, organisations need sustainability governance arrangements that are integrated, practical and effective. This toolkit is designed to help boards and accounting professionals move beyond compliance and siloed thinking and strengthen how sustainability is embedded within existing governance and decision-making processes. We hope it provides a practical starting point for organisations at every stage of their sustainability journey.  

You can access the Sustainability Governance Toolkit and accompanying sustainability resources through ICAS' sustainability hub.