Overview

Today, WBCSD perceives inequality to be one of the three most pressing challenges facing our society globally, alongside the climate emergency and nature loss. Three decades of mounting inequality have brought us to a tipping point. Around the world, we are seeing increasingly wide swaths of people that are dissatisfied with their circumstances and pessimistic about their futures. Social cohesion is breaking down, trust in key institutions is eroding, and protest movements are gaining strength—in some cases, causing violent conflict. For business, inequality is a great source of risk and missed opportunity: limiting productivity and innovation, constraining consumer spending and growth, destabilizing supply chains, breeding political instability, and jeopardizing license to operate. Inequality also acts as a threat multiplier, making other problems worse—something we have witnessed all too clearly as the COVID-19 pandemic has both fed on and fueled inequality globally. At this critical juncture, business has an essential role to play in reducing inequality and in generating shared prosperity that can be enjoyed by all. But to realize WBCSD’s vision of a world in which 9+ billion people can live well, within planetary boundaries, by mid-century, there is an urgent need to integrate, elevate, and accelerate these various strands of work as part of a compelling overarching narrative and agenda for business action on inequality. This is the need that WBCSD and its partners propose to fill with a new Business Commission to Tackle Inequality (BCTI). We hope that you will join us in our efforts to explore and articulate the multi-faceted role and responsibility of business in tackling inequality, and that together we can catalyze business action in support of a more inclusive and equitable society.