“Walk into the board room of a typical Fortune Global 500 company today and the talk will be about today’s challenges. In an environment that rewards short-term gains, immediate concerns understandably dominate management’s time and attention. Many companies with relatively long business horizons are still effectively looking at their watches rather than their calendars. So what would happen if the people in those board rooms asked themselves this simple question: What will the world look like in 2050?”

This paragraph is an extract from a letter sent to WBCSD members in January 2010, informing them of the launch of Vision 2050 – an ambitious, leading-edge study mapping out the transformative changes that would be necessary to allow over 9 billion people to be living well, within the boundaries of the planet. Created with 29 WBCSD members from 14 industries, and including insights from more than 200 companies and external stakeholders in some 20 countries, Vision 2050 declares that business as usual was not sustainable. It explores what a sustainable world would look like in mid-century, how such a world could be realized, and the role that business has to play in making that vision a reality.