Business at the forefront of climate action: WBCSD Council Meeting and Climate Week New York 2025

As Climate Week New York 2025 brought together more than a thousand events across the city, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) marked its 30th anniversary with its annual Council Meeting and the powerful message: sustainability performance is a key driver of competitiveness.

Council Meeting: From ambition to implementation

Held against the backdrop of accelerating climate and nature crises, the Council Meeting gathered over 500 senior executives in New York to chart the future of business leadership. Discussions centered on a simple yet crucial premise: it is execution, not ambition, that defines leadership.

In his opening address, Peter Bakker, President, WBCSD urged business leaders to remember this decade not as a time of crisis, but as the moment when markets transformed. “Sustainability is the engine of competitiveness,” he emphasized.

Council Meeting plenaries explored key themes, including: embedding sustainability into business value, strengthening resilience across value chains, investing in people, and streamlining the corporate accountability system for impact. These themes underpinned events and launches that took place throughout the week. Highlights include:

Accelerating emissions reduction

A key outcome of the Council Meeting was the launch of the report “Accelerating GHG emissions reduction: The potential for WBCSD to scale climate action and strengthen business performance”. Co-authored by WBCSD and EY, the report outlines how WBCSD can accelerate greenhouse gas emissions reduction by adopting a value chain approach. The report argues that WBCSD’s member companies can collectively address scope 3 emissions, close the gap between current commitments and Paris Agreement-aligned targets, and strengthen business performance.  The report introduces the Emissions Reduction Accelerator (ERA) as WBCSD’s mechanism to drive impactful interventions, scale solutions, and track progress toward achieving emissions reduction goals by 2030. 

A series of ERA-focused discussions spread over two days covered topics from leveraging AI and carbon markets to scaling carbon removal and retrofitting real estate for net zero. The ERA sessions contributed to the ongoing development of ERA value-chain pilots that will be launched at COP30 in Belém, Brazil.

Resilient value chains

Value chain transformation was a cornerstone of the week’s deliberations. Business leaders emphasized the need to align metrics and standards to convert sustainability ambition into measurable outcomes. The Global Circularity Protocol for business (GCP) was highlighted as a key pathway to harmonize circular performance across industries, mobilize capital, and scale adoption over the next decade.

Examples like regenerative agriculture showed how aligned frameworks can unlock financing, drive innovation, and strengthen resilience. Participants agreed that pre-competitive collaboration is vital for turning systemic risks into shared opportunities for all.

Physical risks 

The meeting also saw the launch of the CEO Handbook for Physical Risk and Resilience in Value Chains, a practical tool to help executives and investors address systemic risks from changing physical and social environments. The handbook aims to support meaningful discussions between CEOs and C-Suite executives on managing physical risks across value chains, an increasing concern among Boards and investors. Members called for closer alignment between the financial and real economy sectors to direct investment toward ambitious climate and resilience goals.

Education

Beyond technologies and finance, leaders stressed the need for a mindset shift. At the Education Roundtable, participants called for embedding sustainability into leadership, strategy, and lifelong learning. The focus was on equipping current and future leaders with the skills to make purpose-driven decisions in a world undergoing rapid transition.

PACT Scope 3 Summit 

PACT’s annual flagship event convened more than 120 sustainability leaders to explore how to engage suppliers of all maturity levels and scale carbon transparency across global value chains. Two major announcements marked a milestone for scaling and inclusivity. PACT membership is now open to any company, of any size, expanding opportunities beyond WBCSD members to SMEs and new actors in the value chain. The PACT Consultancy Accelerator was also launched to enable consultancies to scale supply chain decarbonization.

Raising the Bar: Standards and disclosure

One of the week’s most significant milestones was the launch of the ISO–GHG Protocol partnership – a turning point toward a single, trusted global language for emissions accounting. By simplifying compliance and strengthening comparability, this collaboration will build confidence with regulators and investors, enabling companies to spend less time on reporting and more on reducing emissions.

Peter Bakker also took the stage at Bloomberg’s TNFD Status Report launch, calling for urgent progress on nature-related disclosures. “As we breach seven of nine planetary boundaries, the implication is clear: businesses cannot treat nature as an externality. We need decision-useful data, standardized metrics, robust assessments, and consistent reporting so markets can price risk, direct capital, and reward innovation,” he said.

Members unpacked the business case for sustainability, highlighting that all corporate valuations remain incomplete without factoring climate costs. AI, forward-looking financial scenarios, and system-wide collaboration on valuation were highlighted as essential tools.

New Avoided Emissions sector guides

WBCSD also launched two new sector-specific guides focused on Avoided Emissions – one for Agriculture and Food, and another for the Built Environment. These publications provide tailored methodologies to help companies credibly assess, validate, and scale low-carbon solutions that prevent greenhouse gas emissions across their respective value chains. The Agriculture and Food guide addresses challenges like seasonal variability and data access, offering case studies on innovations such as plant-based proteins and bioplastics packaging. Meanwhile, the Built Environment guide supports stakeholders in evaluating interventions like thermal glazing, low-carbon concrete, and solar PV systems with battery storage. Both guides complement WBCSD’s broader Avoided Emissions framework and aim to empower businesses, investors, and policymakers to drive climate-smart innovation and sustainable finance.

Looking ahead to COP30

As the focus turns toward COP30, WBCSD members are clear: this is the decade for delivery. Business leaders left New York with renewed momentum to:

• Accelerate ERA pilots in key sectors.
• Expand PACT’s reach to suppliers and consultancies worldwide.
• Embed resilience, accountability, and education into long-term strategies.

The week also ended with a note of gratitude: WBCSD thanked all members for their leadership and collaboration.

For WBCSD, the journey to COP30 is about scaling what works and ensuring no company, sector, or region is left behind.