The World Economic Forum’s network of Global Future Councils is the world’s foremost multistakeholder and interdisciplinary knowledge network dedicated to promoting innovative thinking to shape a more resilient, inclusive and sustainable future. Each council’s insights are taken forward by the Forum’s ongoing initiatives, communities and meetings to ensure impact.
The Network is an invitation-only community. Members join for a two-year term. It works as a time-bound think-tank and convenes around 600 of the most relevant and knowledgeable thought leaders from academia, government, international organizations, business, and civil society, grouped in expertise-based thematic councils. The current term started in March 2023 and will end in December 2024.
Mission
The Network helps to identify and disseminate transformative ideas with the potential for global impact. The Global Future Council members provide strategic insights, scientific evidence, forward guidance, and multidisciplinary understanding of major issues through three pillars:
• Fresh ideas and innovative thinking: Nurturing cutting-edge and disruptive ideas and developing the foresight to identify and shape key areas
• Grounding in expertise and evidence: Providing a foundation for data-, evidence-, fact- and research-based public-private cooperation
• Interdisciplinary and systems approach: Connecting the dots between established and frontier issues and integrating thought leaders from business, academia, civil society, government and international organizations
Find out more about the Network of the Global Future Councils.
Trade policies have evolved beyond economic efficiency, increasingly reflecting non-trade objectives (NTOs) like climate action, human rights and sustainability. This trend sees countries...
Trade and domestic policy interventions can help address challenges women and their businesses face, while gender-disaggregated data assists in identifying issues and evaluating the impac...
Future Focus 2025: Pathways for Progress from the Network of Global Future Councils 2020-2022 offers a positive and inspiring agenda around which a sustainable and inclusive recovery can ...
Artificial intelligence (AI) has great potential to benefit society, but the technology’s full potential can only be realized if it is representative of the diversity of populations it im...
The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted whole economies. Immersive media businesses, which focus on technologies that create or imitate the physical world through digital simulation, have been no...
Companies face increasing scrutiny of their social and environmental performance from consumers, communities, workers, governments and investors. Business leaders are being urged to consi...
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has been met with unprecedented trade and other economic sanctions. Some members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) have revoked Russia’s most-favoured-...
More than half of the world’s GDP – US$44 trillion – is at immediate risk due to nature loss. Fortunately, investing in nature allows us to not only mitigate future environmental catastro...
The growing shift in corporate governance requires organizations to break down silos and create more deliberate alignment and collaboration across critical functions, including ESG/sustai...
This White Paper, from the Global Future Council on Urban Mobility Transitions, evaluates road pricing mechanisms and calls for an acceleration towards equitable, clean and financially re...
To achieve the goal of a safe climate, we will need to both dramatically reduce emissions to achieve absolute zero greenhouse gases and simultaneously start reducing the stock of pollutan...
Synthetic biology is a frontier field that employs science and engineering approaches to design biologically based parts, novel devices and systems as well as redesign existing, natural, ...
Published under the auspices of the World Economic Forum Global Future Council on Clean Electrification, this Insight Report invites policy-makers, regulators and investors to place great...
The financial system is playing a critical role in facilitating the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. As the recovery is largely digital-led, members of the Forum’s Global Future Counc...
Climate change is one of the greatest global challenges. The accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, particularly from anthropogenic emissions, is changing Earth’s climate at ...
The World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Data Policy liaised with the Global Future Council on Media, Entertainment and Sport and the Global Future Council on AI for Humanity t...
As companies around the world increasingly use artificial intelligence (AI) in their decision-making processes, there is an ever greater risk of creating or reinforcing unfair bias. This ...
The highly asymmetric impact of the pandemic has reinforced historical inequalities within and between countries and is now giving rise to a highly divergent recovery. Technological chang...
In collaboration with Deloitte
This report, co-authored with Boston Consulting Group, is the second in our series for the Net-Zero Challenge. It showcases the opportunity that all companies have for huge climate impact...
In partnership with Marsh McLennan, SK Group and Zurich Insurance Group
Cities cover 3% of the earth’s land surface yet they create more than 70% of all carbon emissions. To keep global temperature increases to 1.5°C or below, cities have to achieve net-zero....
The simultaneous disruption caused by the COVID-19 crisis in nearly every country around the world has forced societies into a moment of pause and reflection on what is truly of value. Re...
The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a rapid transformation of the global financial system: Businesses, small and large, needed almost-instant liquidity, individuals embraced digital and c...
COVID-19 is a watershed moment for the digital transformation of business. The rules for success have changed and are ever more reliant on harnessing the power of digital models to create...
The Future of Nature and Business, the second of three reports in the World Economic Forum’s New Nature Economy series, provides the practical insights needed to take leadership in shifti...
A series of reports showing the relevance of nature loss to boardroom discussions on risks and opportunities. These insights provide pathways for business to be part of the transition to ...
A Community Paper by the Global Future Council on Quantum Computing.
A Community Paper by Global Future Council on New Network Technologies
The Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Toolkit explores the practical opportunities and risks that rapidly emerging technologies represent for diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. The to...
Look out: Nature Risks on the Rise
El futuro del espacio no se puede dar por sentado. A medida que el espacio se vuelve más congestionado y crítico para la vida moderna, el tema de su sostenibilidad deja de ser opcional y ...
The future of space is not guaranteed. As space becomes more congested and critical to modern life, sustainability is no longer optional – it’s an imperative. Every satellite launch, orbi...
Our world is becoming increasingly fragile. It is being shaped by complex challenges ranging from growing geopolitical volatility to trade protectionism, societal polarization and urgent ...