UN Global SDG
What are the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)?
The onus of achieving the SDGs is on all parties, in all areas, and at all levels of organisations and supply chains.
Based on this premise, your organisation can definitely contribute to the achievement of the SDGs.
Goal 1
End poverty in all its forms everywhere
Goal 2
End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture
Goal 3
Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages
Goal 4
Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all
Goal 5
Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls
Goal 6
Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all
Goal 7
Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all
Goal 8
Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all
Goal 9
Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation
Goal 10
Reduce inequality within and among countries
Goal 11
Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable
Goal 12
Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns
Goal 13
Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts
Goal 14
Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development
Goal 15
Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss
Goal 16
Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels
Goal 17
Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development
How are the SDGs relevant to your organisation?
The SDGs call for worldwide action among governments, business and civil society to end poverty and create a life of dignity and opportunity for all, within the boundaries of the planet. The SDGs explicitly call on all businesses to apply their creativity and innovation to solve sustainable development challenges. The SDGs have been agreed by all governments, yet their success relies heavily on action and collaboration by all actors.
The SDGs present an opportunity for business-led solutions and technologies to be developed and implemented to address the world’s biggest sustainable development challenges. As the SDGs form the global agenda for the development of our societies, they will allow leading companies to demonstrate how their business helps to advance sustainable development, both by minimizing negative impacts and maximizing positive impacts on people and the planet.
Covering a wide spectrum of sustainable development topics relevant to companies – such as poverty, health, education, climate change and environmental degradation – the SDGs can help to connect business strategies with global priorities. Companies can use the SDGs as an overarching framework to shape, steer, communicate and report their strategies, goals and activities, allowing them to capitalise on a range of benefits such as:
Enhancing the value of corporate sustainability
Covering a wide spectrum of sustainable development topics relevant to companies – such as poverty, health, education, climate change and environmental degradation – the SDGs can help to connect business strategies with global priorities. Companies can use the SDGs as an overarching framework to shape, steer, communicate and report their strategies, goals and activities, allowing them to capitalise on a range of benefits such as:
Strengthening stakeholder relations and keeping the pace with policy developments
Covering a wide spectrum of sustainable development topics relevant to companies – such as poverty, health, education, climate change and environmental degradation – the SDGs can help to connect business strategies with global priorities. Companies can use the SDGs as an overarching framework to shape, steer, communicate and report their strategies, goals and activities, allowing them to capitalise on a range of benefits such as:
Stabilising societies and markets
Business cannot succeed in societies that fail. Investing in the achievement of the SDGs supports pillars of business success, including the existence of rules-based markets, transparent financial systems, and non-corrupt and well-governed institutions.
Using a common language and shared purpose
The SDGs define a common framework of action and language that will help companies communicate more consistently and effectively with stakeholders about their impact and performance.
The goals will help bring together synergistic partners to address the world’s most urgent societal challenges.
Extracted from SDG Compass. Please see full report by clicking here for more details.
How does your organisation start its SDGs journey?
It’s important to understand that not all 17 SDGs will be equally relevant for your company or organisation. The extent to which your organisation can contribute to each goal, and the risks and opportunities that come with them depend on many factors. In taking a strategic approach to the SDGs, the first task should be to conduct an assessment on the current, potential, positive and negative impacts that your business activities have on the SDGs throughout the value chain. The SDG Compass provides guidance on the steps needed to make this assessment, and how to move forward from there.
For this purpose, the SDG Compass identifies five steps as follows:
Step 1
Understand the SDGs
As a first step, companies are assisted in familiarising themselves with the SDGs.
Step 2
Define Priorities
To seize the most important business opportunities presented by the SDGs
and reduce risks, companies are encouraged to define their priorities
based on an assessment of their positive and negative, current and potential impact on the SDGs across their value chains.
Step 3
Set Goals
Goal setting is critical to business success and helps foster shared priorities and better performance across the organisation. By aligning company goals with the SDGs, the leadership can demonstrate its commitment to sustainable development.
Step 4
Integrate
Integrating sustainability into the core business and governance, and embedding sustainable development targets across all functions within the company, is key to achieving set goals. To pursue shared objectives or
address systemic challenges, companies increasingly engage in partnerships across the value chain, within their sector or with governments
and civil society organisations.
Step 5
Report & Communicate
The SDGs enable companies to report information on sustainable development performance using common indicators and a shared set of priorities. The SDG Compass encourages companies to build the SDGs into their communication and reporting with stakeholders.
These steps will help your organisation identify where positive impacts can be scaled up and where negative impacts can be reduced or avoided.
Extracted from SDG Compass. Please see full report by clicking here for more details.
From a practical perspective, let’s see an example of how an organisation can look at SDG 6: CLEAN WATER AND SANITATION
Fact 1
Poor water quality is an issue around the world where about 1 billion people lack access to potable water and over 1.6 billion lack access to improved forms of sanitation. The impact of poor water quality is significant on health and livelihoods of the world’s population.
Fact 2
There is risk to the supply of water supplies due to over-consumption and pollution across the world.
Fact 3
Water is a cross-cutting issue that impacts all SDGs, as without access to adequate amount of quality water, societies and communities’ activities can cease to operate.
Enhancing the value of corporate sustainability
Poor water quality is an issue around the world where about 1 billion people lack access to potable water and over 1.6 billion lack access to improved forms of sanitation. The impact of poor water quality is significant on health and livelihoods of the world’s population.
Organisations can choose to be water-wise
Some of the obvious actions instituted by organisations in their daily operations are:
Be conscious and frugal in consumption of water. For an organisation, this does not only mean saving water, being conscious of the cost of getting the water supply – i.e. the significant costs incurred by local councils (pump, treat, deliver, collect, retreat and return water to the system) to ensure adequate clean water is provided to the community.
Construction of hard landscape such as buildings, roads, sidewalks without green spaces means that less and less water infiltration of water into the ground. Encouraging infiltration and water harvesting within your organisation’s compound or processes, are simple actions that can add up to a large social benefit.
where possible, locally produced supplies. The water footprint of imported goods is very high
This encourages a spill-over effect which will benefit the greater community.
These are examples of steps that can be instituted by an organisation in achieving SDG 6. There are of course many more. Consumers can, on their part, think about the marketing messages by manufacturer, vote with the dollar by purchasing sustainable products, efficient disposal of used items, being mindful of hidden consumption such as transportation, hygiene etc.
From these examples, you can see that instituting good practices in an organisation’s operations can have an impact on the achievement of SDG 6, (and many other SDGs). Having a proper management system in place, with well thought-out and documented policies, processes and procedures helps to achieve these goals.
