O World Business Council for Sustainable Development – WBCSD, at the beginning of the year, decided to revisit its milestone Vision 2050. An ambitious study published a decade ago that explores what a sustainable world would look like by mid-century, how that world could be realized, and what role companies should play in making that vision a reality. CEBDS, which has its Vision 2050 will also have a process of revisiting its milestone.
With the leadership of the WBCSD Executive Committee, dozens of companies representing more than ten industry sectors and with a combined total of US$1.7 trillion in annual revenue have signed up to lead this project.
The WBCSD has assembled an external review committee comprised of global leaders and experts. The result is a collective effort to shape how business can help unlock the transformations needed to enable more than 9 billion people to live well, within planetary boundaries by 2050.
For the WBCSD, while significant progress has been made in recent years, we still cannot see a clear path to creating a sustainable world at the scale or scale required. Against this backdrop, the work to renew Vision 2050 will explore five key focus areas, with the aim of identifying a clear action agenda for business in the next decade and beyond:
- Exploring systems transformation: The concept of systems transformation is becoming increasingly popularized and applied in initiatives to advance sustainable development. The WBCSD will analyze and synthesize a wide range of emerging research and expertise to establish a common understanding and vocabulary of how systems transform, what are the key factors that can help enable and accelerate these transformations, and the role that business can play in driving, rather than reacting to, them.
- Updating the Vision 2050: will involve identifying gaps, reviewing pathways and incorporating details on the latest science, emerging innovations and the most pressing themes and areas for action that we see as having an important role to play on the path to 2050.
- The Operating Environment 2020-2030: To ensure that the vision remains relevant and actionable, the WBCSD will develop a thorough understanding of the most likely and disruptive trends that appear to shape our operating environment over the next ten years and how these trends are likely to impact the ability to address key sustainable development challenges.
- Enablers (and barriers) to transformation: The project will also focus on identifying and exploring key enablers (and barriers) to transformation and how companies can maximize their ability to leverage them in support of our Vision.
- Regional inputs: In order to ensure that the work reflects global realities, the WBCSD will initiate a series of workshops and consultations across a broad spectrum of geographies, testing the applicability of our research in a variety of local operating environments.
