In 2026, many companies feel they are facing a mountain. A regulatory, operational and strategic mountain all at once. Scope 3, biodiversity, extended value chain, environmental dependencies: the topics pile up, often without apparent order, and give the impression of a challenge beyond reach — especially for SMEs.
This feeling is not isolated. It reflects a profound shift in sustainability expectations. For a long time, efforts focused on direct emissions and manageable scopes. Today, attention is shifting to what happens beyond the company’s boundaries, where impacts are greatest but also hardest to manage.
Scope 3 crystallises this difficulty. It highlights emissions and impacts that depend on suppliers, agricultural or industrial practices, sometimes distant local conditions, and complex logistics chains. For many organisations, especially SMEs, the question is no longer whether these issues exist, but how to address them without getting lost in excessive complexity.
From theoretical Scope 3 to insetting: a change of perspective
Facing this “mountain”, a strategic shift is gradually taking place. More and more companies are moving away from a purely theoretical Scope 3 approach, centred on global emission estimates, towards approaches more anchored in the reality of their value chain. It is in this context that insetting is gaining visibility.
Insetting can be understood as an operational approach to Scope 3. Unlike classic carbon offsetting, which consists of financing external projects often distant from the company’s activity, insetting aims to act directly within its own supply chain. The goal is not only to “offset” emissions, but to reduce impacts and risks where they actually occur.
Concretely, this means supporting or accompanying more sustainable practices among key suppliers, improving agricultural or industrial production methods, restoring degraded soils, preserving biodiversity in strategic production areas, or strengthening the resilience of ecosystems the business depends on. These actions are directly linked to material flows, territories and the company’s economic relationships.
This change of perspective is far from trivial. It reflects a growing awareness: Scope 3 is not only a carbon accounting or reporting topic, but a lever for transforming relationships with suppliers and territories. By acting inside the value chain, the company seeks to secure supplies, reduce certain environmental vulnerabilities and better manage risks that, over time, also become economic risks.
For SMEs, insetting has particular appeal. This approach is often more readable and credible than distant offsetting logic, because it allows environmental actions to be linked directly to concrete issues of quality, business continuity and risk management. It also offers a more proportionate path to Scope 3, without claiming impossible exhaustiveness, but by focusing on what is truly critical for the company and its value chain.
Biodiversity and supply chains: from hidden risk to strategic issue
In this movement, biodiversity occupies a central place. Long relegated to a secondary environmental topic, it now appears as a key factor in value chain stability. Ecosystem degradation is no longer an abstraction: it directly affects raw material availability, supplier reliability and the ability of companies to honour their commitments.
For an SME integrated into an international supply chain, these impacts translate into very concrete vulnerabilities. Dependence on a fragile natural resource, a geographic area exposed to climate hazards, or biodiversity loss affecting productivity can quickly become major business risks.
It is in this context that biodiversity ceases to be seen only as a regulatory constraint and becomes both a risk to manage and an opportunity for differentiation. Companies able to identify these dependencies and act in a targeted way strengthen not only their environmental credibility, but also the resilience of their value chain.
Real but differentiated regulatory pressure for SMEs
This evolution sits within an increasingly structuring European regulatory framework. CSRD and ESRS require a broadened view of impacts, risks and opportunities linked to the value chain, including on climate and biodiversity. For large companies, Scope 3 becomes an essential element of reporting and strategy.
For SMEs, the situation is more nuanced. The voluntary VSME standards published by EFRAG do not set a formal Scope 3 calculation requirement. That does not mean the topic can be ignored. Expectations are shifting, often via clients, partners or buyers subject to CSRD, who seek to understand risks present in their own value chain.
In 2026, SMEs therefore find themselves in an intermediate position. They are not required to produce exhaustive reporting, but they are expected to understand, explain and structure their main supply chain issues, notably in connection with Scope 3 and biodiversity.
Conclusion: turning the “mountain” into a controlled trajectory
In 2026, Scope 3, biodiversity and supply chain resilience are no longer peripheral topics reserved for large companies. They form a new ridge line for European organisations, including SMEs, caught between growing regulatory expectations and sometimes constraining operational realities.
Facing this mountain, the temptation is great to consider these issues too complex or out of reach. Yet experience shows that the difficulty comes less from the volume of requirements than from the absence of a clear framework to address them. Scope 3 becomes problematic when treated as a purely theoretical exercise or as an obligation of exhaustive calculation. It becomes a strategic lever when used to understand key value chain dependencies and anticipate real risks.
Recent developments — whether expectations driven by CSRD and ESRS or progressive convergence with environmental management systems — invite a change of perspective. In 2026, what is expected of SMEs is not perfection or exhaustiveness, but the ability to demonstrate a structured reading of their upstream and downstream issues, and coherence between identified risks and actions taken.
In this context, approaches such as insetting or the progressive integration of biodiversity issues into supply chain thinking make full sense. They allow environmental impacts to be linked to the company’s economic reality, strengthen business resilience and build lasting credibility with clients and partners.
The mountain is there, but it does not require a brutal ascent. For SMEs, the real challenge is to transform this accumulation of requirements into a readable, proportionate and controlled trajectory. It is this ability to structure what matters, prioritise and link environmental issues to governance and operational decisions that will make the difference in the years ahead.
Article published by Eco Fluent Solutions, a consultancy specialising in ISO management systems and sustainability governance.
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