Dominic Waughray

Dominic Kailashnath Waughray is Executive Vice President (EVP) and a member of the Leadership Team (LT) at the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), based in Geneva Switzerland.

Dominic joined WBCSD in October 2021.

In his role as EVP, Dominic leads the Climate, Nature and Tackling Inequality Imperatives as part of WBCSD’s strategy.  Working closely with WBCSD Member companies, governments, INGOs and international organizations he focuses on building, scaling and accelerating collaborative business solutions that: 

- reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mainstream climate change adaptation; 

- improve corporate accountability for decarbonization; 

- scale corporate action to become nature positive and promote high integrity nature for climate investments in nature-based solutions; 

- and tackle rising inequality. 

Dominic also has responsibility for WBCSD’s global policy and advocacy and helping with fundraising. Since joining WBCSD Dominic has raised US$9.25m to support the WBCSD-WRI hosted Greenhouse Gas Protocol, and $2m to support the WBCSD Avoided Emissions Guidance. He has also grown the WBCSD Climate, Nature and Equity Imperatives to now engage close to 200 WBCSD member companies, considerably raising engagement and income, and is leading deeper collaboration with government and companies in China.

While at WBCSD Dominic was invited to be a Special Advisor to Stockholm +50 in 2022 and was elected to be UNEP Business Industry Major Group Co-Chair. He is also the executive co-chair of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, where he has helped to considerably strengthen its international governance through the creation of a CEO-led global steering committee and an independent science-based standards board. Dominic was also appointed to the Council of Trustees of the INGO Flaura and Fauna International in January 2024, where he chairs a special investment /fund raising committee. He was a two term Trustee of the CGIAR International Water Management Institute (2016-2024) and helped encourage new programs for tech and the environment into IWMI.

Before joining WBCSD Dominic was Managing Director and Member of the Managing Board at the World Economic Forum, where he built and led the Forum’s sustainability agenda from 2005. During this time, Dominic helped catalyze and build a significant program of public-private sustainability collaboration (Tropical Forest Alliance, Friends of Ocean Acton, Nature Action Agenda, 1t.org, Climate Leaders Alliance, Mission Possible Partnership etc,.) and raised over $60m in philanthropic and government funding to support it.

While at WEF he helped conceive the Global Commons Alliance with other founder members such as Andrew Steer (then of WRI), Naoko Ishii (then of GEF), Johan Rockstrom (then at Potsdam), Peter Bakker /Diane Holdorf at WBCSD and others. This emerged from a successful Washington DC symposium led by this group. At this time Dominic contributed to the Global Commons Alliance as a steering committee member and as a Chair, helping to cement and raise funds for the establishment of the GCA as a unique alliance to fast-track systems change and enhance the protection of global commons.

Prior to joining the World Economic Forum, Dominic served as Principal Partner and Member of the UK OpCo Executive Committee for Environmental Resources Management (ERM), 1998-2005. Before that he served at the UK Natural Environment Research Council Institute of Hydrology.

Dominic received a BA (Hons) and an MA (Cantab) in Geography from the University of Cambridge, UK, and an MSc in Environmental and Natural Resource Economics from University College London.

In 2023 Dominic was appointed to the Advisory Board of the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.

In 2022 Dominic was elected Co-chair of the UNEP Business Industry Major Group. He was also invited to serve as one of the UNEP Executive Secretary’s senior advisers to the Stockholm +50 International Conference.

In 2019 Dominic was invited to serve on the steering committee of the UN Secretary General’s Climate Action Summit as lead on industry transition.

Of Anglo-Indian descent, Dominic actively participates in Indiaspora , a global network that offers a platform for collaboration, community engagement, and social change across the global Indian public and private sector leader diaspora. He also works closely with Indian businesses on various topics to drive the necessary system transformations.

Dominic is well regarded as an excellent moderator and chair.

Dominic is an active Linkedin user: His Linkedin handle can be found here (https://www.linkedin.com/in/dominicwaughray/)