2025: The Moment of Truth for Sustainable Investment
By Ana Guzmán Quintana
When capital must decide whether to finance a fairer world… or a more dangerous one
2025 will be remembered as the year sustainability ceased to be a friendly label and became a political, ethical, and financial battleground. The year in which impact capitalism had to look itself in the mirror and answer an uncomfortable question: Are we financing a more humane future… or merely putting makeup on the risks of the present?
1. United States: social rollback as a systemic threat
The second Trump Administration has set in motion an accelerated dismantling of the social advances of recent decades: cuts to civil rights, the elimination of DEI policies, and restrictions on fundamental freedoms for vulnerable groups. The offensive also extends to migration, with accelerated deportations and the militarized use of the border, generating severe human rights impacts. This regression also affects women and girls, with global repercussions documented by international organizations.
Even the academic world (a space for critical thinking and social innovation) has come under pressure, and we have witnessed the unprecedented freezing of billions of dollars in funding—none other than to Harvard—for refusing political oversight.
Despite the political chaos, investments in renewables continue to grow, around 10% compared to the previous year, even after the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and the paralysis of wind permits on federal land.
However, the ESG industry is showing fatigue, with fewer launches, greater scrutiny, and a higher cost of capital. Polarized politics are, unfortunately, shifting the ground beneath our feet faster than a deep-rooted economic and social trend such as investing in a more sustainable world.
2. Defense and sustainability: the deepest dilemma of the year
2025 marked the year in which major asset managers lifted their historic veto on the defense sector. UBS opened the door to weapons manufacturers in “sustainable” vehicles. Allianz did the same, also incorporating nuclear activities under certain conditions. The argument: without security, there is no prosperity.
The problem is that when security becomes a business, a perverse spiral emerges: more weapons – more tension – more war – more revenue – more weapons. If returns depend on conflict, what real incentive exists for peace?
Governments must protect collective security, guarantee rights and diplomacy, and prevent armaments from becoming an economic driver. Investors, meanwhile, must reflect on the kind of world we are financing, who wins when there is war, and what we lose when there is violence.
Investing in defense may protect borders. But sustainable investment must protect human dignity. And we must not forget that peace is essential infrastructure… perhaps the most essential of all. The adjustment has not been uniform: some asset managers have maintained coherence, while others have retreated from ethical positions so as not to fall behind on returns. The purest funds continue to avoid the military sector, while others reclassify their sustainable universe. The market is fragmenting: between those who do not sell their principles… and those who put a market price on them.
On the positive side, the sustainability debate is finally beginning to shed the black-and-white thinking that has defined it in recent years. Sustainability is a goal, not a single path, and each person interprets it through their own reality: their cultural context, history, experiences, and priorities. This implies accepting that there is no universal “moral decalogue” that can be applied equally to all investors.
This is where the role of the advisor becomes essential: someone capable of translating individual principles and values into coherent investment decisions, designing portfolios that truly represent what each client wants to defend with their capital.
3. Climate change: an urgency that ignores geopolitics
The environmental crisis does not wait. Each year without action multiplies future costs. Massive investments are needed in resilient infrastructure, clean energy systems, adaptive cities, and sustainable food systems, among others. If these investments are not addressed, today’s financial returns will translate into guaranteed losses tomorrow.
S&P Global’s “2026 Sustainability Outlook – Insights in Motion: See the Big Picture” quantifies this very clearly: the annual cost of physical climate risk for companies in the S&P Global 1200 will reach $1.2 trillion in 2050, even under a mitigation scenario. The most costly phenomena will be extreme heat and water stress, and the most affected sectors will be utilities, energy, and financials.
And most alarming of all is that only 35% of companies worldwide have climate action plans.
4. Social cohesion: when truth fragments, societies break
2025 also leaves us with another silent but devastating threat: the fracture of the social fabric. We live in an increasingly polarized world, where dialogue is replaced by trenches, and narrative matters more than reality. Truths have turned into identity flags, and public debate into a battlefield with no room for listening. Added to this is the rise of generative artificial intelligence, capable of creating false information indistinguishable from the real. If sustaining basic consensus was already difficult, it is now even harder to discern what is truth and what is algorithmic fabrication.
When facts cease to matter and truth depends on the side you are on, democracy weakens. And without democracy, sustainability is impossible. Impact investment should help rebuild spaces for dialogue, educational systems that foster critical thinking, media and technologies that protect truth, and communities with people at the center.
Because a society that cannot speak to itself… ultimately becomes one that cannot be lived in.
We need to stop. Reflect. Read. Interpret. Look again at the other as someone with a truth—not as an enemy to be defeated. And remember that no worldview is legitimate if it leaves human dignity aside.
At Portocolom, we have never believed in extremes. We were not swept away by euphoria when sustainability seemed to be the solution to everything… nor are we going to jump off the wagon now that the world has become more complex. It is not about choosing between business or values, peace or security, planet or development. It is about understanding that everything is connected.
The financial system has an essential role in building the future: moving capital toward where opportunities, jobs, innovation, social cohesion, and protection of our shared home are created. That is the commitment we renew in 2025: to keep adapting, improve our models, and always put people at the center.
Because only in this way can investment fulfill its true mission: driving economic growth that truly deserves to be called progress.