The Future of Materials Systems 2026

Global Battery Alliance and the Battery Passport BOX 1 The Global Battery Alliance (GBA) is a multi- stakeholder organization bringing together governments, battery and automotive manufacturers, mining companies, technology providers, financial institutions and civil society. A flagship initiative of the GBA is the Battery Passport,12 an emerging sustainability certification for batteries that leverages digital product passport infrastructure to enable consistent, verifiable and interoperable data on battery sustainability, performance and provenance across borders. The passport integrates information on the battery’s carbon footprint, responsible sourcing, material composition and circularity attributes. This in turn supports regulatory compliance and due diligence, by scoring and independently validating performance through GBA certification to inform regulators, investors, procurers and market decision-makers. By aligning diverse stakeholders around shared data principles and piloting interoperable solutions, the GBA Battery Passport demonstrates how multi-stakeholder cooperation can reduce fragmentation, build trust and create scalable traceability systems. The initiative offers a practical template for traceability in other critical materials value chains. The growing number and diversity of materials- related initiatives has made the landscape harder to navigate. This complexity is reflected in the results of the global leaders’ survey, where over half of respondents cited difficulty identifying which initiatives deliver the greatest value and impact as a key barrier to international cooperation. In the absence of multilateral progress, the number and different forms of cooperation initiatives on materials are likely to increase. For instance, the Forum’s survey highlighted that 75% of global leaders believe non-multilateral forms of cooperation are those most likely to be adopted to address future challenges to materials systems (see Figure 7).As interest-based forms of cooperation increase, the risk of fragmentation, duplication and complexity increases. As a result, intergovernmental organizations and global institutions will need to step up their systemic convening and coordination roles, while seeking where possible to ensure coherence with ongoing multilateral developments, avoid duplication and remove barriers to cooperation. For more information on the sources behind the Forum’s analysis in this chapter, see Appendix. Most likely forms of international cooperation to address challenges to materials systems FIGURE 7 Source: World Economic Forum global leaders survey, 2025.25% 23%27% 15%10%Multilateral RegionalPlurilateralMulti-stakeholder Bilateral75% of global leaders believe non-multilateral forms of cooperation are those most likely to be adopted to address future challenges to materials systems. The Future of Materials Systems: Cooperation Opportunities in a Multipolar World 14