In 2012, at the United Nations conference on Sustainable Development in Rio De Janeiro, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) were born. The objective of these goals was to set guidelines for all governments, groups and individuals to implement in order to meet the urgent environmental, political and economic challenges facing our planet. These goals are a universal call-to-action, asserting the potential that if we act together, we can end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people can enjoy a peaceful and prosperous existence.
In 2016, the SDG’s replaced the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which started a global effort in 2000 to tackle the indignity of poverty. For the first fifteen years of this millennium, the MDGs drove progress in areas such as reducing income poverty, providing access to clean water and sanitation, driving down child mortality and improving maternal health.
The efforts which the MDG’s sparked made a significant improvement to the lives of millions of people across the planet. They kick-started a global movement for free primary education, inspiring countries around the world to invest in future generations. A significant impact was also made in combatting HIV/AIDS and other treatable illnesses such as malaria and tuberculosis, with a 40% drop in reported cases of HIV and AIDS across the world since 2000.
The achievements of the MDGs provided many valuable lessons and experiences which the UNDP have taken forward in order to globally shift their focus to new goals. These new goals strive to go the extra mile in completing the journey that was started in 2000, as well as providing a universal template to shift the world onto a more sustainable path.
The SDGs go a step further than the MDGs as they cover issues that affect every single one of us. Not only do they reaffirm an international commitment to ending poverty everywhere, they are ambitious in making sure that no person is left behind. They endeavour to bring us all together in an effort to build a more sustainable, safer and prosperous planet for all of humanity.
It is time for us to collectively step aside from the distractions and absurdity of global events constantly highlighted by the media and take a look at the most urgent problems that we face. We must be empowered by the knowledge that we, as a modern society, collectively have the intelligence and resources to make this dream of a more sustainable and peaceful planet a reality.
The UNDP says that not only are these goals achievable, it necessary for us to achieve them by 2030 – if not sooner. The UNDP has a strategic plan in place to focus on key areas including poverty alleviation, democratic governance and peacebuilding, climate change, disaster risk and economic inequality. While the UNDP has valuable experience and proven policy expertise enabling them to implement these values, they cannot do this alone. It requires everybody to come together – governments, the private sector, civil society and individual citizens. Working together under the guidance of these goals and with a shared vision, we can leave behind a better planet for future generations to enjoy.
We all have a responsibility to respond to this urgent call to action. However, the SDG’s are not only important to us as a collective, they offer businesses worldwide an incredibly exciting source of growth and investment, according to Forbes “capital markets are starting to embrace this framework in a way that simply hasn’t happened with previous development initiatives. We’ve already seen 18 of the biggest Dutch pension funds commit to investing in line with the SDGs. If other big institutional investors around the world are encouraged to follow suit, impact-driven companies will find it easier to access the capital they need to tackle these global challenges at scale.” Michele Giddens, Forbes, May 2018.
Achieving these goals is going to cost trillions, and they cannot be achieved without full cooperation and heavy investment from the private sector. Companies can no longer ignore the social and environmental impact they are having. To ignore these issues will be catastrophic not only to the health of businesses in the long-run, but to our planet and ultimately our very existence. We are at a unique time in human history, we are facing concerns that have never been faced before. We have the resources to achieve these goals by 2030, and as Unilever CEO Paul Polman stated, businesses who take action now and invest in sustainability have the opportunity to seize “the greatest economic opportunity of a lifetime”. All governments, business and people across the planet must come together. We must see that this is the time to invest in the future of our people and planet.
Changing the collective mind-set to a more sustainable global society is one thing, however to make this work we need to take action. Following an announcement at the United Nations General Assembly, the World Benchmarking Alliance are developing publicly available benchmarks which will rank companies on their contributions to achieving the SDGs. With this shared knowledge, everyone from consumers to investors and governments will have a comprehensive tool for deciding where to spend their money, allocate their investments or direct their policy and advocacy efforts.
With these benchmarking tools, the goal is to clarify what exactly society expects from businesses and how companies can meet those expectations. “Benchmark methodologies translate societal expectations into metrics, providing companies with a clear path forward,” quotes Mark Wilson, group chief executive of Aviva.
The challenges we face may seem insurmountable at times, but according to the UNDP we are equipped with the tools, the resources and intelligence we need to achieve these goals. All that is needed is for action to be taken on a global scale. Let us step aside from distractions and progress forward, empowered with the knowledge that by taking action in-line with the Sustainable Development Goals, together we can utilise our resources and create a better planet for future generations to enjoy.
Read more about the Sustainable Development Goals here.
References: Accessed May 2019 https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/sustainable-development-goals.html
