A People-Centered Approach to Climate Action
How companies integrating impacts on people into climate and nature actions can strengthen resilience, reduce risk, and deliver business value
Published: September 21, 2026
Most companies have made bold climate commitments. Almost none have a plan for the people it will disrupt, displace, or depend on to deliver it.
The evidence is mounting: the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre’s Just Transition litigation tracker, records 95 just transition legal cases globally while insured losses from natural catastrophes, which increasingly disrupt the same workforces and communities that businesses rely on, have topped USD $100 billion for five years running.
This is a matter of ownership. Climate strategy usually sits with sustainability teams, while decisions about workers, communities, and suppliers sit elsewhere. Climate-related people considerations fall into the gap between functions, treated as a risk to manage after the fact rather than a design input from the start. The result: companies discover the cost of getting this wrong only once it shows up as a lawsuit, a stalled project, or a community that no longer trusts them.
Co-developed with Shift and ERM, this publication is the first in a series accompanying WBCSD’s forthcoming People-Centered Climate Action Roadmap. The Roadmap seeks to help sustainability, risk, and other business functions to move from commitment to integrated action, by closing the gap between climate and nature ambitions and the people considerations that need to be accounted for to build stakeholder trust, accountability and business resilience.
Inside the Insights Note
- Four common blockers that challenge companies to move from commitment to action
- Three case studies showing how companies in different sectors have started integrating people considerations into governance, strategy, risk management and operations.
- The common thread across the case studies: what worked, and how each company reduced risk to the people it depends on.
- Three concrete actions any company can take now to move towards a more people-centered approach in regards to their climate and nature strategies.
To find out more about WBCSD’s work on the people-centered or ‘just’ transition, or contribute to a case study for the forthcoming People-Centered Climate Action Roadmap, please contact the People Action team at peopleaction@wbcsd.org