Why Sustainable Procurement Remains the Bottleneck in Global ESG Progress: Insights From the EcoVadis 2025 Index
- Gloria Ribeiro
- Dec 17
- 5 min read
The EcoVadis Global Supply Chain Sustainability Risk & Performance Index 2025 offers one of the most rigorous empirical windows into how companies worldwide are managing environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks across their value chains. With more than 49,000 ratings issued in 2024, the dataset reveals both encouraging momentum and a set of systemic weaknesses that continue to constrain global progress.
Across all the trends, one finding dominates: sustainable procurement remains the structural bottleneck in global sustainability maturity, even among companies showing strong performance in environmental and human rights domains. This insight is not new, but what is new is the scale of the gap—and its persistence despite five years of regulatory evolution, global supply chain shocks and heightened expectations for corporate accountability.
1. The Maturity Gap: Policies Are Advancing Faster Than Value-Chain Governance
EcoVadis reports a global Sustainable Procurement average of 43.1; the lowest of all four themes assessed. Even with a modest improvement of +1.9 points since 2023, 59% of companies worldwide remain in the high to medium risk ranges, indicating little to no action to embed sustainability expectations into their supplier management systems.
This weakness contrasts sharply with advancements in:
Environment (55.1)
Labour & Human Rights (56.3)
Ethics (49.7)
These domains show annual increases and more robust score profiles, particularly in Europe and parts of Asia-Pacific. The implication is clear: organisations are strengthening internal ESG management systems, but not translating this into externalised, value-chain governance structures. This is precisely where human rights and sustainable procurement policies are designed to operate but the gap demonstrates the difficulty of operationalising these commitments beyond corporate boundaries.
2. Supply Chain Human Rights Due Diligence Remains Fragmented and Largely Reactive
Despite global legislative momentum, from the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) to the expanded remit of the UK Modern Slavery Act, the Index shows a striking lack of maturity in practical human rights due diligence.
Key data points illustrate this regression:
Only 15% of companies have grievance mechanisms related to child labour, forced labour or human trafficking.
Only 4% conduct human rights impact assessments; one of the most fundamental requirements under the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs).
Over one-third of companies rated for the first time in 2024 fall into the high to medium risk categories for labour and human rights.
From a governance perspective, this reveals a persistent divergence between policy-level commitments and operational execution. For practitioners in business & human rights, this signals that the conceptual acceptance of due diligence has not yet translated into systemic, enterprise-wide adoption.
3. The First-Tier Illusion: Why ESG Progress Is Not Cascading Through Supply Chains
One of the strongest and most consistent findings is the improvement of multi-rated suppliers. Companies that undergo multiple rating cycles increase their average by nearly 9 points, demonstrating the effectiveness of structured engagement and corrective action planning. Yet this improvement has not yielded proportionate advances in deeper tiers of the supply chain.
The evidence:
The first-rating baseline in 2024 is only 48.4, revealing that new suppliers entering global value chains continue to lack basic policies and controls.
Regional baselines remain deeply uneven (e.g., Latin America 42.9, Africa & Middle East 41.8, Asia-Pacific 42.8).
Even in Europe, the most mature region, the first-rating baseline (52.9) lags significantly behind the multi-rating average (60.9).
In essence, procurement systems are onboarding suppliers with low sustainability maturity while relying on top-tier improvements to manage risk. This creates a structural blind spot for enterprises seeking to meet regulatory obligations regarding supply chain transparency and risk mitigation.
4. Regulatory Acceleration Is Not Eliminating the Supplier Engagement Gap
European companies continue to lead across all themes, yet only 14% have Advanced performance in Sustainable Procurement. This is particularly significant given the European regulatory context:
CSDDD mandates due diligence obligations.
CSRD requires disclosure of impacts across value chains.
Member-state legislation (e.g. German LkSG, French Duty of Vigilance) reinforces supply-chain accountability.
Despite this, half of European companies still fall within the Partial range (25–45) on Sustainable Procurement, a domain directly tied to supply chain due diligence. The conclusion is not simply that regulation is insufficient; rather, regulation is progressing faster than operational capability. Supplier engagement, cascading expectations, monitoring, and capacity building remain the weakest links.
5. The Bottleneck Explained: Why Sustainable Procurement Is Systemically Difficult
Several structural drivers emerge from the data:
A. Organisational Structure - Procurement functions often remain cost-driven, siloed, and insufficiently integrated with ESG governance teams.
B. Supplier Heterogeneity - The majority of global suppliers, particularly SMEs in Asia-Pacific, Africa, and Latin America, start from a very low baseline of sustainability maturity.
C. Resource Asymmetry - Large companies are improving fastest, but their suppliers often lack the capability or resources to meet new expectations.
D. Limited Incentives - Commercial incentives for suppliers to invest in sustainability often remain weak, inconsistent, or unclear.
E. Depth of Engagement Required - Sustainable procurement requires organisations not only to manage their own footprint but to actively influence the behaviour of hundreds or thousands of suppliers—an inherently complex and costly undertaking.
6. What the Index Means for the Future of Business & Human Rights Practice
The 2025 results illuminate a fundamental truth: Value-chain resilience, human rights protection and sustainability outcomes depend on procurement transformation more than on ESG strategy alone.
For practitioners and policymakers, three insights are especially critical:
A. Capability building must be prioritised - Supplier development programmes; training, corrective action plans, co-investment, remain the most proven levers of improvement.
B. Human rights due diligence must be integrated, not parallel - Procurement cannot treat human rights as an external or legal requirement; it must be embedded in category management, supplier onboarding, contract lifecycle management and performance evaluation.
C. Transparency must extend beyond Tier 1 - Top-tier suppliers are improving, but systemic risks often lie further downstream. Companies must invest in deeper visibility and relationship-building across extended value chains.
7. Conclusion: From Compliance to Transformation
The EcoVadis 2025 Index reinforces that global ESG momentum is real, but uneven. Companies are improving internally, but their value chains are not keeping pace. For those of us working in business & human rights and sustainable procurement, this moment requires a shift from compliance-based approaches to transformational procurement practices that:
Prioritise long-term supplier capability
Align commercial decisions with human rights expectations
Recognise suppliers as partners in resilience
Integrate ESG into every dimension of sourcing and contract management
As regulatory thresholds rise and societal expectations shift, organisations that invest now in sustainable procurement will not only meet compliance requirements; they will build stronger, more resilient, and more responsible value chains capable of withstanding future shocks. Sustainable procurement should not be the last mile of ESG maturity; it is the foundation upon which all meaningful corporate sustainability must be built.