The Private Sector and the SDGs: The Need to Move Beyond ‘Business as Usual’

Abstract

In September 2015, world leaders gathered in New York to endorse the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Ban Ki-moon asserts that the SDGs signal a 'paradigm shift for people and the planet' (UN 2014: para. 24). Significantly, under this new agenda there are expectations that businesses, government and civil society actors will be equally responsible for progressing a more sustainable path forward. Many assert that the private sector has particular strengths to bring to bear in delivering on the SDGs, including innovation, responsiveness, efficiency and provision of specific skills and resources. Interestingly, the business sector had a strong role in influencing development of the SDGs. In this paper we discuss the challenge being put forth to business actors by the SDGs, reflecting on both the potential for more sustainable and responsible practices and on the limits to change.

Multinational enterprises and the Sustainable Development Goals: An institutional approach to corporate engagement

“…This equally applies to the role of MNEs in sustainability issues. Reflecting a broader trend of greater corporate engagement in sustainable development (Blowfield, 2012), over the past decades, MNEs have expanded their involvement in international negotiations on institutional frameworks for sustainable development, including those on the SDGs (Scheyvens, Banks, & Hughes, 2016). As such, MNEs help form institutions that can not only govern, but also guide, their sustainable development activities.…”

“…Nevertheless, sustainable development also necessitates a radical diversion from current practices (Chang, 2010). There is a need to go ''beyond business as usual'' (Scheyvens et al, 2016) and extend a company's sphere of influence (Ruggie, 2008). Focusing only on internally actionable and ''avoiding harm''-centred SDG targets tends to make MNEs rather passive sustainable development agents.…”

The Relationship between Investor Materiality and the Sustainable Development Goals: A Methodological Framework

“…Indeed, the greater burden falls on the private sector with estimates that it will have to close the funding gap of $2.5 trillion per year and to ensure that the private sector provides the expected 50% of the total $115 trillion cost of funding the SDGs [2] Fortunately, the investment community is increasingly seeing the SDGs as creating investment opportunities and corporations are looking for the business opportunities they create. The current discussion on the role of the private sector in the achievement of the goals is intense [3][4][5], especially at the institutional level. In May 2018, the European Commission, on the basis of the Recommendations of the High-Level Expert Group on Sustainable Finance [6], adopted a package of measures that set out a comprehensive strategy to connect finance to sustainability through reorienting capital flows towards sustainable investments, managing financial risk connected to climate change, social issues and environmental degradation and fostering long-termism in financial and economic activities [7].Besides measures on SDG implementations at a country level, such as the SDG Index and Dashboard of UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (UN-SDSN), in order to track progress towards the goals and their associated 169 targets at a company level, a large number of tools and "business indicators" have been proposed.…”

Negative capability? Measuring the unmeasurable in education

“…Depending on one's perspective, the SDGs represent either a watering down of an international approach to addressing substantive international human rights commitments, built up since the 1970s, or an opportunity to take these further (Gore 2015;Scheyvens, Banks, and Hughes 2016;Pogge and Sengupta 2016). Education has prominence in the SDGs, both as a substantial goal with a number of targets, and as a component of other goals.…”