Is Your Company Setting Priorities to Address the Sustainable Development Goals?

Around the year 2000, companies, governments and civil society set social and environmental goals for 2020, with an aim to create a seismic shift for the sustainability and future of our planet. 

Courtesy of United Nations

As we approach the final few months of 2019, many of these institutions are re-evaluating their goals, recognizing that while change has occurred, we are still on a path towards the true seismic shift we all expected. We are running out of time, though. 2020 is just around the corner and there is still quite a lot of work to be done.

In 2015, the United Nations created the Sustainable Development Goals, (“SDGs”), a set of 17 critical priorities that businesses, governments and civil society must work around together to create a healthy, resilient and thriving planet for all people, nature and animal life that live here. The release of the SDGs gave these actors an opportunity to reframe their 2020 goals, and look towards 2030, the year the SDGs are targeting for their finish line. As 2020 approaches, 2030 becomes the new beacon for many of the same goals that were set back in 2000.

Has your business examined the SDGs? Have you considered what role you play?
We cannot deny, nor should we, that businesses need to make money as a first priority. At the end of the day, businesses exist to provide customers with goods and services. That said, businesses of all sizes have a role to play in society, too. The SDGs allow businesses a roadmap, of sorts, or even a menu of options to consider, as they evaluate this role. To play even a small part in advancing the SDGs, businesses will need to prioritize what's possible.  It won't be easy to land on a solution for no poverty, or clean water and sanitation for all, or zero hunger in isolation. Collaboration will be essential. Now is the time to take a look within, however, to consider what role your business does play, and how your goals can align with the SDGs.

So where does one begin?

1. Examine the SDGs and consider which are most closely aligned to your business. Do you have a clear sense of where you're already delivering impact?  Which two or three SDGs are resonating most closely?
2. Next, identify where there are gaps in contributing to these two or more SDGs within your business. Are you helping to protect clean water? Are you promoting gender equity? Do you have methods for advancing energy efficiency? Think strategically about how to close those gaps. 
3. Poll your customers, employees, shareholders, suppliers or vendors. Is there a way to partner with others around existing social impact or environmental sustainability programs that address the SDGs? You may even discuss with competitors. What programs are they investing in that you could invest in with them? Pre-competitive collaboration breeds both profitable returns and lasting impact.
4. Consider where your resources are and what capital you have to make adjustments. Are you in a financial position to make adjustments where those gaps exist? Could you make small tweaks in your business to more positively advance one or two goals that coincide with the SDGs? What are some of the incremental steps you could take that deliver on the SDGs. Small steps do add up to big change over time!
5. If your products, services or business approaches are already tied to one or more SDG, could you replicate what may be working well or scale to address even more of them?
6. Ask for help. If your company has not begun to consider the role it plays in delivering on the SDGs, look for resources that could get you started. Here is a great place to start learning about how businesses can respond to the needs outlined by the SDGs.

Working through these steps should give you a good sense of what elements within the SDGs are feasible for your company to commit or contribute to. It will take all of us working together to address the SDGs. Change is possible if we focus and act with intention. Let's make the next ten years count.