Mobilizing the private sector to tackle inequality, unlock opportunity and bridge the gap to inclusive growth.
The Business Commission to Tackle Inequality (BCTI) is a cross-sector, multi-stakeholder coalition of organizations and their leaders with the mission of building equitable, future-proof markets and societies where all can thrive.
Following the publication of its flagship report Tackling Inequality: An agenda for business action, an expanded group of Commissioners will be joining in action to trigger and deliver meaningful outcomes in support of the 10 action areas where companies and investors can and have an essential role to play. With a dual mission to tackle inequality within their own value chains and to build markets and societies where all can thrive.
Collectively, Commissioners will seek to transform business operations, address critical barriers and unleash shared impact opportunities at a systems level.
To its private sector members and partners it offers a trusted, learning, holistic community of leaders that individually and collectively will:
Raise the bar and prove the case on equity-related business action
Take action, individually and collectively, to progress the inequality agenda and shape inclusive markets
Hold ourselves accountable for a people positive agenda and shape capital markets to do the same
Launched in September 2021, the BCTI is coordinated and powered by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and brings together 80+ leading organizations (“Commissioners”) from business, the investor community, intergovernmental organizations, civil society and academia.
BCTI Commissioners have committed to guide BCTI’s work, advance its 10-point action agenda published in May 2023 within their own organizations, and to spearhead a global movement to elevate equity and inclusion as a Board room agenda and foster markets where social performance and accountability is a given.
Importantly, BCTI seeks to serve as an accelerator of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda with a focus on deepening private sector contributions to tackling inequality between 2024 and 2025 with an aspiration to show real progress on its action priorities surrounding the United Nations 2025 General Assembly meetings and COP30 in Brazil.
The Business Commission is not the first initiative to address deeply rooted issues of inequality and inclusion.
Our Commissioners share a recognition that to deliver meaningful progress on our inequality and inclusion agenda, it will imply engaging differently and widely with all sectors as well as with the people and communities locally that we aim to support and join forces with. It also implies building on the essential lived experiences over the past decades on this agenda and a ‘connecting of the dots’ and elevation of work already ongoing.
Grounding principles of our work therefore include a commitment to community engagement and participation as well as a relentless focus on only taking on those activities where we believe our work as aspirational frontrunners and mobilizers of private sector action is additive to existing programs.
BCTI is coordinated and powered by WBCSD’s Equity Action Imperative which since January 2024 combines the mobilizing power and expertise of two previously separate communities: Business for Inclusive Growth (“B4IG”) and the WBCSD’s Equity Action team.
For more information, go to Contact.
The BCTI is made up of a diverse and powerful group of more than 80 organizations.
insight
Rising inequality weakens our ability to tackle the climate crisis. We are witnessing firsthand how climate change is compounding global inequality, with extreme weather threatening the world’s poorest countries and communities.
February 20, 2023
insight
The Valuable 500 are using business to address the inequality and inequity of people with disabilities across society. It is about how we, as consumers, as employees, as people who believe in business, who buy from business and work for companies, use that vehicle of business to make a difference in the world.
December 16, 2022
insight
As the world faces multiple global crises, soaring levels of inequality are compounded by the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, further exposing the cracks in an already broken system and driving up the cost of living everywhere.
November 22, 2022
