The following sections provide examples of the World Economic Forum’s unique initiatives to drive large-scale progress on critical public challenges, as well as selected meetings held in 2023-2024 to provide a platform for progress, cooperation and trust-building.

The Forum’s 10 centres develop initiatives, communities and insights that further the Forum’s mission to improve the state of the world. They typically bring together multiple parties, from government to business, academia, civil society groups and experts, all of whom, like the Forum, seek to address and make progress in tackling the world’s most pressing challenges.

Currently, our initiatives and communities are pursuing work in areas such as advanced manufacturing, the nature economy, health and the future of jobs. The following section showcases three examples of the set of initiatives underlying our work on decarbonization, gender parity and technology governance.

As the climate crisis intensifies and its global impacts accelerate faster than models forecast, the Forum is taking a holistic approach to help create an inclusive, net-zero and nature-positive future. It is doing this through several initiatives, including those listed below.

This alliance is the world’s largest community of chief executive officers and senior executives dedicated to net-zero emissions. Its objective is to develop a network of business leaders who have the ability to accelerate the pace of climate action. Its members seek to achieve this by setting science-based targets, disclosing emissions and promoting decarbonization and partnerships throughout global value chains.

The alliance has three action pillars: aligning corporate climate ambition with scientific requirements, working with chief executive officers to deliver near-term strategy transformation and engaging with policy to create an enabling environment for climate action. The first holds members accountable, with the aim of aligning with the 1.5°C target – in joining the alliance, members must meet criteria related to disclosures and target setting. The second pillar supports and connects members in different geographies and industries to share knowledge, demonstrate emissions reductions and boost collective action. The final pillar involves corporate climate policy engagement to shape a global enabling environment for the net-zero transition.

More than 100 chief executive officers and senior executives from the alliance signed an open letter in October 2023, ahead of the 28th Conference of the Parties (COP28) summit. The letter proposed three areas for government action: making huge investments in green energy and the supporting grid, buying from companies that adhere to net-zero targets and supporting carbon capture technologies.

At the Annual Meeting 2024, the alliance released a report, Bold Measures to Close the Climate Action Gap: A Call for Systemic Change by Governments and Corporations, which suggested that individual action was insufficient to reach climate goals and called for stronger government action. Overall, the report laid out 10 high-impact measures for government and business to take to help close the 600 gigatonne (Gt) gap in emissions reductions and, in doing so, remain on course to meet the 1.5°C target.

In November 2023, the alliance launched its Scope 3 upstream action plan – an unprecedented effort to accelerate decarbonization in the most challenging emissions scope through collaborative action throughout value chains. Alliance member companies with a combined upstream Scope 3 footprint of more than 0.5 Gt – more than the annual emissions of Australia – endorsed the action plan as guidance.

More than $130 trillion of private capital is committed to net zero, but the decarbonization solutions necessary to transition hard-to-abate sectors are underfunded.

This initiative aims to mobilize the capital needed to support the adoption of early-stage technologies that will support the net-zero transition. Its objective is to engage financiers from throughout the investment value chain, as well as energy, industrial and mobility companies, to pursue three important changes.

The first is to improve supply. Financing structures and de-risking mechanisms must be designed to demonstrate the commercial viability and bankability of decarbonization projects. Secondly, demand for solutions needs to increase. This can be achieved by identifying and using the power of financial institutions to support companies and their purchasing power for decarbonization solutions. The third point is to enable investment by creating a conducive environment with policy-makers.

During the reporting period (30 June 2023-30 June 2024), the initiative released three reports. The first, Finding Pathways, Financing Innovation: Tackling the Brazilian Transition Challenge, sought to highlight how Brazil – through developing new financial instruments, mobilizing private funding and developing a national taxonomy – should pursue its transition journey.

The second, Policy Action to Mobilize Climate Finance, and Market Responses, highlighted how public action can improve the commercial viability of net-zero investor opportunities. It considered three priority roles for the public sector: driving action through incentives and penalties, creating certainty with a stable regulatory environment, and setting better standards for investment in climate solutions.

The third paper, Scaling Clean Technology Offtakes: A Corporate Playbook for Net Zero, proposed a playbook for enhanced corporate engagement in scaling net-zero solutions and highlighted various corporate offtake agreements to stimulate demand for sustainable aviation fuel and green hydrogen. This approach is critical for scaling up these technologies and strengthening the private sector demand signal of initiatives like the Forum’s First Movers Coalition (FMC).

The Forum’s work on artificial intelligence (AI) promotes responsible and ethical development. The AI Governance Alliance brings together leaders from various sectors, including business, government, academia and civil society, to create frameworks and guidelines for AI governance. The alliance focuses on ensuring transparency, inclusivity and accountability in AI systems, as well as facilitating collaboration and innovation while addressing potential risks and societal impacts. Through its efforts, the alliance seeks to build a sustainable and trustworthy AI ecosystem that benefits all stakeholders globally.

Launched in June 2023, following the Responsible AI Leadership Summit, the alliance quickly grew to more than 350 members from over 270 organizations in the reporting period. It is committed to establishing global best practices for AI governance, ensuring that technological advancements contribute to societal well-being and are guided by a strong commitment to diversity and ethics.

The alliance’s early efforts have been connected to The Presidio Recommendations on Responsible Generative AI, released in June 2023. These recommendations provide guidelines for approaching critical issues in AI governance. They cover the ethical use of generative AI, emphasizing responsible innovation, international cooperation and societal benefits.

The alliance has three primary workstreams, which, in combination, address diverse areas of AI governance. The aim is to lay a foundation that promotes responsible AI use while encouraging innovation.

The first workstream, Responsible Applications and Transformation, engages leaders from different industries and sectors, encouraging them to consider strategic implications and the novel opportunities and challenges that come with generative AI solutions. This work impacts how organizations responsibly integrate AI technologies, ensuring their applications align with ethical standards and promote sustainable innovation.

The second workstream, Resilient Governance and Regulation, unites public and private stakeholders with academia and civil society organizations to develop anticipatory governance mechanisms and durable institutions equipped to govern rapidly evolving AI technologies. This work influences the creation of robust regulatory frameworks and enhances societies’ ability to effectively manage AI risks and opportunities.

The third workstream, Safe Systems and Technologies, convenes chief science officers and AI producers with the aim of advancing consensus on technical governance approaches associated with advanced AI systems, such as multi-modal models and AI agents. This work affects the development of safety mechanisms and facilitates collaboration on best practices for AI system design and implementation.

In January 2024, the AI Governance Alliance released an inaugural briefing paper series, combining lessons from the three workstreams and guiding stakeholders towards coordinated AI governance strategies. The series emphasized multistakeholder collaboration, ethical considerations and proactive risk management to create a trustworthy AI ecosystem.

By prioritizing shared prosperity, the alliance is committed to uniting stakeholders globally to harness the benefits of AI while ensuring that AI governance remains a shared, equitable and inclusive endeavour that benefits all.

At the current rate of progress, closing the global gender gap will take 134 years, and the current economic context, coupled with technological and climate change, risks causing further regression. Significant gender gaps remain in several critical labour market outcomes and leadership positions, and while the share of women in leadership roles has risen steadily in recent years, this trend has shown signs of reversal since 2022. There are similar gender gaps across health, political participation and education. The Forum’s work on gender parity encompasses initiatives on tracking global progress, global- and country-level initiatives for accelerating the economic integration of women, identifying best practices from the private sector and a focus on women’s health.

The Global Gender Gap Report annually benchmarks the current state and evolution of gender parity in four key dimensions: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment. It is the longest-standing index tracking the progress of countries’ efforts towards closing these gaps since its inception in 2006.

The report continues to serve as a guide for direction setting and prioritization throughout the Forum’s action-oriented gender parity work. The 2024 edition covered 146 countries and revealed overall slow progress, with year-on-year improvements in terms of economic participation and a deterioration in educational parity.

The largest gaps today are in political empowerment and economic participation, with only 22.5% of the gap closed in political empowerment and 60.5% in economic participation. These are also the areas where progress has been fastest since 2006, particularly driven by increases in women holding parliamentary and ministerial positions as well as professional and technical jobs. The Global Gender Parity Sprint aims to accelerate progress precisely in these areas.

The Forum’s Gender Parity Accelerators are national-level public-private collaboration platforms that support countries in closing economic gender gaps while providing a global network to share successes and exchange findings. Each accelerator brings together ministers and chief executive officers as co-chairs and involves 50-100 of the largest national employers to advance women’s labour force participation, pay equity and leadership, and hardwire gender parity into the future of work.

When joining the Accelerators Network, countries also join a global community of impact and learning that is complemented and supported by global initiatives, peer communities, iterative dialogues and unique insight.

Gender Parity Accelerators have been set up in 15 countries to date, with Australia, Guatemala, Honduras, Kenya and Mexico joining the network in the last two years. The accelerators involve more than 95 public-sector and 1,265 private-sector partners, reaching close to one million women. Depending on national priorities, Gender Parity Accelerators are tackling structural issues such as access to quality and affordable childcare, social safety nets, flexible work arrangements and discriminatory social norms. They are also promoting pay transparency and enhancing work quality and pay standards, setting targets for women in leadership, creating workforce diagnostics and reskilling and upskilling initiatives to boost women’s employment in high-growth sectors.

To support global efforts to accelerate parity in economic participation and leadership by 2030, the Forum launched the Global Gender Parity Sprint at the Annual Meeting 2024. The platform brings together business, government and international organizations to mobilize around three measurable outcomes up to 2030. These outcomes are:

For each of the three outcomes, several possible pathways for progress will be shared, implemented and championed by the sprint community, bringing together Forum-led efforts, partner-led efforts, and public-sector-led and multistakeholder coalitions.

The Forum has worked with more than 70 companies on their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) journeys and, through its DEI Lighthouse Programme, identified and highlighted DEI initiatives globally.

The programme is an annual effort designed to pragmatically identify proven, effective DEI initiatives from companies in many different industries and geographies and share the valuable lessons learned. The aim is to equip leaders with best practices to help focus DEI efforts on what works best, ultimately contributing to the development of more resilient and inclusive economies.

The scope of the DEI Lighthouse Programme encompasses initiatives targeted at employees, suppliers, customers or the broader community, and it addresses any underrepresented group, including women, people of colour, LGBTQIA+ people and people with disabilities.

The Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Lighthouses 2024 report features the latest cohort of DEI initiatives selected by an independent expert panel for having achieved significant, scalable, quantifiable and sustained impact for one or multiple underrepresented groups. The DEI Lighthouse repository, comprising the 2023 and 2024 cohorts, currently includes 15 DEI Lighthouses and 13 cases highlighted for their promising and innovative design features.

Women live longer than men but spend 25% more of their lives in poor health. This has profound effects not only on the individuals in question but on society at large, particularly in economic terms. Addressing the gender gap in women’s health has the potential to boost the global economy.

The Global Alliance for Women’s Health is a multisector platform that prioritizes, protects and promotes women’s health. It has three areas of focus: financing, science and innovation, and agenda setting. The first focus area seeks to unlock investment and explore different financing models to boost funding for women’s health. It supports progress for women’s health innovation and is keen to ensure it meets women’s diverse needs, preferences and lifestyles. Beyond this, it seeks to enhance global awareness of women’s health, focusing on disseminating data that illustrates the wide-ranging societal and economic effects of women’s health.

In January 2024, the alliance released the report Closing the Women’s Health Gap: A $1 Trillion Opportunity to Improve Lives and Economies. This report analyses the health conditions that uniquely or disproportionately affect women and quantifies the health gap today and the potential economic boom of bridging it tomorrow. Addressing shortcomings – which limit the ability of many women to engage in the workforce and earn a living for themselves and their families – could reduce the time women spend in poor health by almost two-thirds, improve the health outcomes and daily lives of over 3.9 billion people and could lead to a 1.7% increase in per capita gross domestic product (GDP).

Members of the alliance pledged $55 million to help improve women’s health outcomes, including $25 million in 2024 to overcome barriers and ensure equitable support for the categories of highest unmet need in generational and women’s health.

Amid a complex geopolitical environment, nearly 3,000 leaders – with over 350 public figures including more than 50 heads of state and government – from more than 125 countries, business leaders, international organizations, civil society representatives, scholars and innovators convened for the 54th Annual Meeting under the theme “Rebuilding Trust”.

The meeting served as a platform for dialogue and solutions through 450 sessions, bringing together diverse perspectives. Throughout the week, the Forum and its partners advanced more than 50 initiatives, serving as enduring frameworks for multi-year cooperation between the public and private sectors.

World leaders articulated the need to rebuild trust in the face of fragmentation. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres highlighted how geopolitical divides are hindering collective action on global challenges. Premier Li Qiang of the People’s Republic of China stressed the imperative of increasing unity, while European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen underscored the inflection points the world faces and urged deeper global collaboration.

Highlighting the importance of taking a systemic view of the climate and nature crisis, Ajay S. Banga, President of the World Bank, emphasized the inseparability of poverty eradication from climate action, healthcare and food security. Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, Kristalina Georgieva, highlighted leaders’ responsibility to act decisively for the planet’s future, even in the face of potential unpopularity.

Alongside them, French President Emmanuel Macron urged a balance between realism and optimism in tackling complex global challenges, emphasizing the agency of leaders to effect meaningful change. Secretary of State of the US, Antony Blinken, was also clear on the need for global partnerships and cooperation in solving the world’s biggest challenges, including the war in Ukraine and shipping disruptions in the Red Sea.

Jake Sullivan, National Security Advisor of the United States, reiterated his country’s support for Ukraine, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for renewed investment in his country and proposed a potential global summit for peace. To support this effort and in advance of the Annual Meeting, more than 80 national security advisers from governments and international organizations met in Davos to discuss a blueprint for peace in Ukraine at the Fourth National Security Advisors Meeting, hosted by Switzerland in collaboration with the Forum. Seventy chief executive officers from Forum partner companies and European leaders discussed this at the Annual Meeting, including Jens Stoltenberg, Secretary-General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Meanwhile, discussions on the Middle East conflict highlighted the urgent need for international action to prevent escalation and promote peace and humanitarian support.

During the Annual Meeting, many Forum initiatives made progress, including the Global Collaboration Village, the AI Governance Alliance, the Centre of the Fourth Industrial Revolution Network, the Global Lighthouse Network, the First Movers Coalition for Food, the Future of Growth Initiative and the TradeTech Global initiative.

Continuing with its long-standing tradition, the Forum hosted the 15th Annual Meeting of New Champions (AMNC) in Dalian, People’s Republic of China in June 2024. The meeting, opened by Chinese Premier Li Qiang, brought together over 1,600 leaders, including more than 100 public figures and 800 business leaders. The meeting saw a record number of innovators across the Forum’s innovators communities, UpLink and social innovators who engaged actively in the programme. It also saw the participation of President Andrzej Duda of Poland, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh of Viet Nam and Amina Mohammed, Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, among other leaders.

Convened under the theme “Next Frontiers for Growth”, the meeting helped leaders address the challenges and opportunities presented by a rapidly evolving global landscape. Participants reiterated the need to deepen cooperation in key areas such as climate change, trade and innovation. In the lead-up to and during the event, the Forum and its partners launched or advanced around 20 initiatives and reports, including the Fostering Effective Energy Transition 2024 report and the Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2024 report.

The meeting also saw the release of the Responsible AI Playbook for Investors, the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship’s report on AI for social innovation. Several key initiatives progressed, including the New Generation Industry Leaders programme, the Industry Net Zero Accelerator initiative and the Future of Growth Initiative. Overall, the meeting forged partnerships and highlighted innovative solutions that can help rejuvenate the global economy and identify new models for sustainable and inclusive growth.

In April 2024, the Forum convened the Special Meeting on Global Collaboration, Growth and Energy for Development 2024 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The meeting came at a critical geopolitical moment when mounting security, economic and environmental challenges demanded leadership from the public and private sectors.

It brought together over 1,000 global leaders and experts from 90 countries, including 220 public figures. Participants included Antony Blinken, US Secretary of State; Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund; Bisher Hani Al Khasawneh, Prime Minister of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan; Mostafa Kamal Madbouly, Prime Minister of Egypt; Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian National Authority; Mohammed Shia’ Al Sudani, Prime Minister of Iraq; Bola Ahmed Tinubu, President of Nigeria; Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda; and Anwar Ibrahim, Prime Minister of Malaysia.

Among the primary outcomes were the development of the Forum’s Future of Growth Initiative, the establishment of the Centre for Space Futures, Oman and Cyprus joined the Digital FDI (foreign direct investment) initiative and UpLink, the Forum’s open innovation platform, launched a new Circular Carbon Economy initiative.

In September 2023, coinciding with the United Nations General Assembly in New York, the Forum reconvened its communities of purpose for the Sustainable Development Impact Meetings. At the heart of the meetings were a series of 60 curated peer-to-peer dialogues alongside 12 live-streamed sessions for the public.

The meetings brought together more than 1,000 global leaders, including 600 business leaders, more than 80 chief executive officers and chairpersons, and 100 public figures. Among the public figures were four heads of state and government, eight heads of international organizations, 25 foreign affairs ministers and 15 environment ministers.

The Sustainable Development Impact Meetings convened against a backdrop of interconnected crises and at the halfway point of the 2030 Agenda. As the world grappled with a low-growth, high-debt economic environment and high levels of inflation and food insecurity, the meetings served as a critical platform to respond to these challenges and revive momentum for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The meetings also informed work towards other milestones, including COP28 and the Annual Meeting 2024.

The meetings brought together members of the Forum’s Communities of Purpose spanning sectors, generations and geographies, seeking to address global challenges and transform prior commitments into action.

At the meeting, more than 50 organizations signed a Humanitarian and Resilience Investing Initiative call to action to mobilize $10 billion for businesses in frontier markets to support vulnerable communities. Participants also advanced work on the Reskilling Revolution, which aims to provide one billion people with better education, skills and learning by 2030. Meanwhile, Costa Rica, Panama, Peru and Zambia joined nine other countries as members of the Global Plastic Action Partnership.

May’s Industry Strategy Meeting 2024 brought together more than 300 strategy officers – top executives responsible for corporate strategy – under the theme “Shaping Business Transformation in an Era of Disruption”. By building on the lessons and takeaways from the Annual Meeting 2024, participants had the opportunity to engage in peer-to-peer exchanges, explore and anticipate future industries, advance the Forum’s action and impact agenda, and forge collaborations.

The meeting, an annual milestone for the strategy officers engaged in the Forum’s 22 Global Industry Communities, helped advance the overall industry agenda. It defined four priorities for the year ahead: technology as a driving force for companies, workers, the economy and society; climate and nature and the latest strategies to accelerate the energy transition; cooperation as a new competitive advantage in a context of increasing competition; and next-generation economic and industrial policies in a new global era.

The meeting’s outcomes were designed to inform the scope and direction of the Forum’s industry communities and to scale up and magnify the impact of the existing initiatives of the Forum’s 10 centres.