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The World Economic Forum Supply Chain & Transport Industries sustainability initiatives centre on accelerating freight decarbonization across the transport ecosystem.

The Getting to Zero Coalition for shipping decarbonization is a collaborative effort including around 200 stakeholders from across the maritime value chain working to scale and commercialize Zero Emissions vessels and fuels by 2030.

The Coalition has launched an industry-led Call to Action for Shipping Decarbonization. With over 160 Signatories at time of launch, since amassing more than 200 signatories committed to decarbonizing the international shipping industry by 2050, and seeking support from governments to accelerate a just and equitable transition.

In October 2021, ahead of COP26, the Call to Action was delivered to the UK COP26 presidency during the Global Maritime Forum’s Annual Summit.

The Coalition also published A Strategy for the Transition to Zero-Emission Shipping prepared by UMAS and with support from the Mission Possible Partnership. The report highlights the importance of public-private alignment being a necessary aspect of an equitable transition towards zero-emission shipping. The Coalition, in collaboration with the Energy Transition Commission also launched a Next Wave report to highlight how green shipping corridors are central to 2050 zero-emission industry targets.

Read more about this initiative here

Open Data is a huge resource for urban planning, but this resource is under-exploited due to data fragmentation, lack of standardization and data quality.

Enel X has launched a new set of products fully based on Open Data collected from institutional portals, satellite imagery and open source communities, with the goal to transform data into information and actionable insights enabling sustainable urban development.

The first two products designed and validated by Enel X and released free of charge for Public Administrations on YoUrban Portal are:

The index was developed in collaboration with Università di Siena and launched in September 2021. It evaluates the sustainability of urban development in Italian cities based on four criteria: digitization, environment & energy, mobility and waste management.

Launched in December 2021, it assesses cities’ readiness with regards to the 15 min city concept – in which relevant public services / infrastructures should be reachable by citizens in 15 minutes by foot or bike from their home to reduce commuting and consequently emissions and to improve city resiliency as well as citizens quality of life. The solution aims to help municipalities identify key area of improvement to address effective urban planning by proximity policies.

Read more about this initiative here

With the growing challenge to counter health misinformation, violent extremist and terrorist content, and the exploitation of children online, there is an urgent need for more deliberate global coordination to improve digital safety.

The World Economic Forum, in collaboration with governments and businesses launched the Global Coalition for Digital Safety to accelerate public-private cooperation to tackle harmful content online.

The coalition will serve to exchange best practices for new online safety regulation, take coordinated action to reduce the risk of online harms, and drive forward collaboration on programs to enhance digital media literacy.

The Coalition is building on the insights shared in the report on Advancing Digital Safety: A Framework to Align Global Action which presents a user-centric framework for advancing digital safety. The Coalition is currently focused on advancing three areas:

Discover how to get involved here

As we start the new year, we have been busy asking the Forum's business partners for their insights into a range of issues - from getting to net zero to supply-chain disruption and the future of healthcare to the power of data.

Swiss Re is one of two pioneers to have a digital product tested and successfully certified by the Digital Trust Label, the first-ever label for digital responsibility launched by the Swiss Digital Initiative. With the Swiss Digital Trust Label, users can easily identify trustworthy digital services, and providers of digital services can now declare their digital responsibility in a credible manner.

Given the complexity of digital technologies, transparency alone is not enough to build trust. Recognized standards will also play an important role to help boost trust among users of digital technologies. Created in Switzerland in a collaborative and inclusive way, the Digital Trust Label was designed from a user perspective and offers organizations a unique opportunity to convey their commitment to digital responsibility.

Read the press release here.

Accenture releases a new paper identifying six signals that stand out as essential to the future success of organizations.

01. Learning From the Future

02. Pushed to the Edge

03. Sustainable Purpose

04. Supply Unbounded

05. Real Virtualities

06. The New Scientific Method

Read the report here.

Mike Moore, Senior Principal at Accenture Research asks, "Why do the smartest of us get the future wrong so consistently?" He continues, "Hidden biases are everywhere. But they need not cloud our foresight. Taking these steps have helped us peer into the future, defining a set of Signals of change — and associated wildcards — that will shape the business landscape in the years to come. Take a look at our Business Futures 2021 report to help you prepare for what might materialize, no matter how uncomfortable it might be."

By 2030, annual clean energy investments in emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs) need to be multiplied by more than seven times – from less than USD 150 billion in 2021 to over $1 trillion – to put the world on track to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 and meet these countries’ energy needs.

Through the Mobilizing Investment for Clean Energy in Emerging and Developing Economies initiative, the World Economic Forum is leading a global taskforce that aims to uncover barriers, identify solutions and enable collaborative actions to significantly scale investments for clean energy.

On top of the country deep-dives performed in Brazil and India that aim to develop viable investment opportunities to accelerate the countries’ clean energy priorities, the taskforce has developed a set of solutions that could help unlock more finance in emerging markets. Such proposals include the Net Zero Equity concept or suggested policies to accelerate corporate power purchase agreements in developing countries.

In 2022, the taskforce will advance two new solutions to solve the clean energy investment puzzle in EMDEs::

The World Economic Forum, the International Energy Agency (IEA), the Imperial College London and ETH Zurich are collaborating to establish a Cost of Capital Observatory – hosted by the IEA – to increase transparency on the cost of capital and inspire investor confidence to price and invest capital in clean energy projects in emerging markets. The Observatory will guide project developers, financial institutions, and policymakers, and help encourage clean energy investment in emerging and developing economies.

The World Economic Forum’s Platform on Energy, Materials and Infrastructure, together with the Sustainable Development Investment Partnership (SDIP) are launching a new stream of work on the transition from coal to renewables. Building on the Principles for Financing a Just and Urgent Energy Transition, this work aims to identify compelling options to enable the transition from coal to renewable energy, in a manner that replaces coal-based capacity, leverages existing land, infrastructure and grid connections, and helps create a just transition for impacted workers and communities.
Countries, energy companies and financial institutions will be able to leverage a toolkit referencing transition best practices across policy, planning and finance mechanisms.

Read more about these initiatives here

The Global Coalition to Fight Financial Crime was launched at the Annual Meeting 2018 by Europol, Refinitiv and the World Economic Forum with the purpose of improving societies’ abilities to identify disrupt organized crime by improving the effectiveness of anti-financial crime efforts in the financial services sector.

The coalition identifies key weaknesses in the current system and advocates for tangible reforms at political and policy level to make global anti-money laundering efforts more effective.

The coalition’s 20 members lead the field of prevention and response to financial crime. Members are drawn from law enforcement, banking, payments, fintech, civil society and research institutions. By 2020 the Coalition began to operate independently of its three founding members. It now has a formalised secretariat chaired by John Cusack, former co-chair of the Wolfsberg Group.

In 2021, the Coalition became an International Champion of the Global Initiative to End Wildlife Crime.

Key achievements of the coalition’s expert committees include constructive engagement with the European Commission on the AML legislative reform, culminating in a coordinated response from a several members to the public consultation on EU guidance for public private partnerships.

Coalition members also produced a report on beneficial ownership transparency in light of ongoing work by international governments on FATF Recommendation 24.

The next step for the Coalition is to develop its APAC regional chapter, harnessing the expertise of members and others in the region.

Read more about this initiative and how to get involved here

This year's Edelman Trust Barometer finds almost two-thirds of people are inclined to distrust organizations, which could impact attempts to tackle COVID-19 and climate change. Scientists are the most trusted in society – and government leaders the least trusted.

The Barometer shows four forces at work, including a failure of leadership that could destabilize society, according to Richard Edelman. But he says it’s possible to break the cycle of distrust and rebuild public trust through factual information and demonstrable progress.

Read more here

As environmental, financial and societal pressures converge, what keeps CEOs up at night? The 4,446 CEOs from 89 countries and territories who responded to PwC's 25th Annual Global CEO Survey fear cyber and health risks the most.

They display optimism about continued economic resilience but are fearful of macroeconomic shocks. When it comes to climate - those taking action see rapid progress, but the "question of how to bring others along looms large".

Read the full report here.

Deloitte's 2022 Global Health Care Outlook reveals how the global health care sector continues to rise up to the new challenges presented by the ongoing pandemic, which continues to dominate health care systems’ attention and resources.

The paper reviews the current state of the global health care sector, explore the six pressing sector issues, outline the actions to help build resiliency, and achieve improved health care outcomes in the new normal.

Blackrock Chairman and CEO, Larry Fink, calls on CEOs to be "deliberate about their role in society and act in the interests of their employees, customers, communities, and their shareholders" in his annual investor letter, announcing the launch of a new Center for Stakeholder Capitalism.

The Center will "help us to further explore the relationships between companies and their stakeholders and between stakeholder engagement and shareholder value", and "will bring together leading CEOs, investors, policy experts, and academics to share their experience and deliver their insights."

Fink says, "Our conviction at BlackRock is that companies perform better when they are deliberate about their role in society and act in the interests of their employees, customers, communities, and their shareholders."

Waste is harming our planet, people and economies. Currently, half of global plastic production is for single-use applications and only 14% of plastic packaging is collected for recycling. Organizations have the responsibility to take action to solve the packaging problem the world currently faces.

Coca-Cola HBC has launched the €100K Sustainability Challenge for startups to identify solutions in two areas of sustainable packaging:

To identify innovative solutions to help accelerate packaging collection rates, while driving consumer engagement. These solutions should be economically efficient, scalable across multiple geographies and complement existing public infrastructure.

To find new solutions for primary and secondary packaging that could be appealing to consumers, have a more efficient environmental footprint vs existing “conventional” packaging types, be economically viable and have potential for scale.

Read more about this challenge and how to participate here

In a fast-changing world with ongoing supply-chain disruptions, manufacturing companies are now forced to design and roll out new strategies, and to develop the right set of capabilities, to build resilience across their entire value chains.

The World Economic Forum, in collaboration with Kearney, has launched a white paper, “Charting the Course for Global Value Chain Resilience”, addressing this challenge.

This paper builds on the previously introduced Resiliency Compass and presents five distinct profiles of resilience leadership to help companies confidently chart a course forward towards resilience with focus and action. A series of playbooks outline actionable strategies employed by leaders within each resilience profile to fortify their value chain.

Here's what contributing members are saying about their journey towards long-term resilience applying the resilience profile strategies:

A new report produced by the World Economic Forum and Accenture reveals a wide perception gap between business executives, who think their companies are cyber resilient, and security leaders, half of whom disagree.

The accelerating pace of digitalization, fuelled by COVID-19, has led to a record-breaking year for cybercrime. Ransomware attacks were up some 150% in 2021 and more than 80% of experts say it is becoming a threat to public safety.

The report’s key insight is that cybersecurity is no longer a sufficient tactic – building resilience needs to be integrated into an organization’s strategy, especially since it can take 10 months to detect a security breach.

Accenture's Chair and CEO, Julie Sweet, says, “Organizations need to work more closely with ecosystem partners and other third parties to make cybersecurity part of an organization’s ecosystem DNA, so they can be resilient and promote customer trust. This report underscores key challenges leaders face – collaborating with ecosystem partners and retaining and recruiting talent. We are proud to work with the World Economic Forum on this important topic because cybersecurity impacts every organization at all levels.”

New report: The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the critical role that manufacturing and supply chain systems play in powering the global economy.

To navigate current and future market and climate change disruptions and stay competitive, the leaders must go beyond the transformation of manufacturing operations and leverage investments in technology to reinvent their business models.

Aggregating the views of over 50 leading manufacturing companies, services providers and academics, this White Paper outlines successful case studies from those who have already started to unlock business model innovation through the adoption of advanced manufacturing. It highlights five strategies and one challenge leaders need to go through to unlock transformational growth.

With contributions from members of the Global Future Council on Advanced Manufacturing and Value Chains.

After years of inadequate action in combating the threat of climate change, players in all sectors are waking up to the challenge. Commitments from companies are growing exponentially, with more than 2,000 companies worldwide setting targets validated by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), up from only 116 in 2015—a growth of 65% per year.

The Winning the Race to Net Zero: The CEO Guide to Climate Advantage report, published by the World Economic Forum in collaboration with Boston Consulting Group (BCG), details the ways that early-mover companies are changing the game for their sectors and beyond while securing sources of business advantage.

The transition may come with risks, but it's an unprecedented opportunity. The report details the key benefits in stepping up to the challenge, and the ways climate leaders can gain competitive advantage, including through:

The report also found that the greatest progress in recent years has often come not from collective action, but from competitive action triggered by a single company boldly moving ahead of its sector.

Read more about the Net-Zero Challenge here

Since its launch, the Circular Cars Initiative (CCI) has gathered over 100 global organizations and 250 executives.

The initiative is rapidly accelerating the transformation of circular manufacturing and business models within the automotive and mobility industry – with its impact mainly focused on two fronts:

1. Informing the automotive circularity Policy Agenda.

The policy recommendations were endorsed by the European Commission in 2021 and CCI is also invited to support China’s policy roadmap.

CCI also presented key policy action recommendations with the group of Ministers in Zero Emission Vehicle Transition Council (ZEVTC) event at COP26. ZEVTC members states cover 80% of the automotive market.

2. Catalysing industry-level change

The CCI driven EV Battery End of Life Coalition action group is developing cross-value chain partnerships to align key stakeholders on strategies, practices, and policy and to contribute to the economic viability and circularity of batteries. Key companies such as AB Volvo, Audi, Mahindra, DHL, Umicore, BASF and Analog Devices have joined as leaders and participating in the coalition sprint.

CCI is also coordinating with the First Mover Coalition for amplifying companies’ leadership in circularity – five CCI members already joined the first phase of the coalition.

CCI is also aligning the automotive sector on shared ambitions and uniform standards for accelerating adoption of Low Carbon Steel and Circular Polymers. Key companies including AB Volvo, Mahindra, Arcellor Mittal, SSAB, JSW Steel, Tata Steel have endorsed and are actively participating.

Circular Cars Initiative’s ambition is to create the biggest circularity focused multi-stakeholder coalition in the mobility sector. It is led by the World Economic Forum in partnership with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), the European Institute for Innovation and Technology’s Climate-KIC, SYSTEMIQ, Accenture and McKinsey.

Read more here

There is an urgent need to deliver on net-zero commitments, while simultaneously bringing value to the economy and society at large. To accelerate this process, the World Economic Forum in collaboration with Accenture and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), launched the Transitioning Industrial Clusters Towards Net Zero initiative.

This initiative has created a global movement to accelerate the transformation of industrial clusters needed for net-zero emissions. It developed a structured approach to financing, policy, technology and partnerships, to enable companies around the world to accelerate their alignment on net zero targets.

The benefits of transitioning clusters towards net zero go beyond emission reductions. The UK hopes to secure 1.5 million jobs through the development of four net-zero industrial clusters and will also see between £3-4 billion of potential savings per year by 2050 through avoided CO2 penalties.

Four clusters are already working to transition towards net zero:

This initiative will work to ensure that by 2024, 100 of the largest emitting clusters worldwide will have aligned on a net-zero ambition and strategy. Seven new clusters from Australia, the UK and the EU have already committed to join the initiative

Read more about this initiative here

Maersk has brought forward its net-zero targets by 10 years. The Financial Times reports, "with companies such as Amazon, Ikea, and Unilever demanding carbon-free transport by 2040 and Maersk already ordering its first ships capable of running on green methanol, the Danish group is able to speed up its push to eliminate emissions."

Mads Stensen, Senior Sustainability Advisor, Maersk says, "More than half of Maersk’s top 200 customers have ambitious science-based or zero carbon targets for their supply chain, and they are dependent on us helping them reaching these targets. With our new climate neutral commitments, we can help our customers on this journey as well as help drive the whole industry towards this goal."

Read more here

Concrete is the most used human-made material on the planet with 14 billion cubic meters produced every year for buildings and infrastructure - from roads to bridges, tunnels to homes, and hydropower installations to flood defenses. The production of cement, the key ingredient in concrete, accounts for around 7% of global CO2 emissions.

Acknowledging that no single organization can make it to net zero on its own, the World Economic Forum and the Global Cement & Concrete Association launched the Concrete Action for Climate initiative. This initiative is part of the Mission Possible Partnership and is uniting companies from the Americas, Africa, Asia and Europe, marking one of the most prominent global commitments to Net Zero.

Through this initiative, 40 of the world’s leading cement and concrete manufacturers, including CEMEX, HeidelbergCement, Holcim Group and China National Building Materials (CNBM), have joined forces to cut CO2 emissions by 25% by 2030 (from 2020), and achieve Net Zero concrete and cement by 2050.

The pledge to decarbonization and Net Zero will prevent almost 5 billion tonnes of carbon from entering the atmosphere by 2030, equivalent to the CO2 emissions of almost 15 billion flights from Paris to New York.

The cement and concrete industry is calling on a wider group of stakeholders to support the transition to Net Zero. Discover more about this initiative here

The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report, produced in collaboration with Marsh McLennan, SK Group, and Zurich Insurance Group, launches today. Environmental risks dominate for both the short and long term.

Climate change-related risks also account for three of the top risks by severity in the next 10 years. The global risks horizon changes over the next two to 10 years, as the cascading impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic are felt.

And less than 16% of respondents to the Global Risks Perception Survey are ‘optimistic’ or ‘positive’ about the outlook for the world.