Policy & Insights helps members navigate and engage with the policy, regulatory and market conditions that impact business competitiveness and sustainability performance. It has two distinct roles. One involves monitoring policy and regulatory developments and advocating for conditions that support sustainable business action, without engaging in lobbying activities. The other focuses on generating insights through member benchmarking. In doing so, it brings together market intelligence, evidence from members’ initiatives, communities and Action Themes to show progress in sustainability performance and indicate where government, regulatory or market action could accelerate (or block) implementation.

WBCSD’s long history, global membership and cross-sector perspective give it credibility with policymakers, standard setters and multilateral institutions as a respected representative of business. It anticipates policy and regulatory change, interprets what it means for members’ businesses and helps members be heard in the forums where policy and standards take shape. Importantly, WBCSD brings a collective, positive business voice into influential discussions, grounded in evidence and practical implementation experience. This approach to positive policy is a real innovation. WBCSD continues supporting members in multilateral processes such as COP, and is adding a positive policy approach aimed at advocating for policy incentives that unlock action and investments at scale.

WBCSD’s flagship Business Breakthrough Barometer draws on aggregated and anonymized insights from members and other sources to present business leaders, governments and multilateral institutions with a collective view of progress, implementation barriers and policy priorities across sectors and regions. It is a strategic tool that combines these insights with members’ Action Theme work with governments to shape multilateral action agendas. This helps position members for effective engagement and as implementation partners.

When a bottleneck demands focused action, WBCSD will run a small number of selective, time-bound, high-impact policy sprints where its unique combination of cross-sector membership, whole-value-chain perspective, business intelligence and convening power can create meaningful progress. These interventions bring members, governments, partners and other stakeholders together to inform policy thinking, explain implementation challenges, explore policy frameworks that can unlock progress across the value chain and help replicate successful approaches. To support these efforts, WBCSD will also provide members with evidence, insights and materials that support their own policy engagement activities.

Policy & Insights also strengthens members’ ability to navigate and shape the external environment. The Policy Professionals Peer Group, for example, provides a forum to learn from peers, assess policy dependencies and improve engagement with policymakers and other stakeholders. That’s an increasingly important capability as transition plans face greater scrutiny based on external policy, regulatory and market conditions.

The enhanced Reporting Matters Dashboard is one important source of insight, which will give members a confidential benchmark of their public disclosure practices versus peers. The dashboard will show members not only how well they report, but also how their stated sustainability ambition, maturity and performance compare with those of their peers. This helps them strengthen reporting and connect sustainability information with business performance and financial reporting. All benchmarking is conducted by WBCSD using aggregated and anonymized data through a confidential process, in accordance with WBCSD's Antitrust Compliance Policy. Members receive only their own individual results and aggregated peer comparisons; no individually identifiable member data is shared with other members.

The Membership Conditions which include the membership criteria are currently being aligned with the new strategy and an update to this work will be included in the September 2026 launch.  If any changes are needed to be made to the Membership conditions, these will be presented to AGM for approval in December.

The dashboard is complemented by a structured dialogue (housed in the Action Theme “Embed Sustainability in Decision-Making”) with voluntary and mandatory standard setters, helping members understand and prepare for evolving standards. WBCSD's engagement with standard setters is conducted in accordance with its Antitrust Compliance Policy. The goal of this dialogue is to stay ahead of standard-setting developments on an ongoing basis through the Connectivity Forum within the Standards and Frameworks for Credible Action Hub, also housed in the Action Theme “Embed Sustainability in Decision-Making.”