Technological innovation…it’s complicated.
On the one hand,
SDG17 calls on businesses and governments to actively partner in order to deliver sustainable development goals, but doing so is easier said than done.
There are many parts of SDG 17 – such as the sections on trade rules, aid, and systemic issues – where companies can have only limited influence, given they are
While many people think sustainability is about green policies, that is only part of the story, says VMware Vice President, Sustainability Strategy Nicola Acutt. “Our view is holistic and inclusive of sustainability for people and the planet.”
Indeed, Acutt says VMware frames its definition of sustainability around three ideas: people, planet and product. “For us, sustainability
rior to COVID-19, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were gaining traction among local governments and city leaders as a framework to focus local policy on ambitious targets around inclusion, equity, and sustainability. Several cities published reports of their local progress on the SDGs in Voluntary Local Reviews (VLR), echoing the official format used by countries
2020 is a crucial year for women and girls, everywhere. We celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women and adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. It also marks the five-year milestone of the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals. This year’s 64th Commission
When all the UN Member States adopted the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015, this marked the beginning of a journey aiming to unite all actors under the same umbrella in driving an equitable future for all, enabling thriving economies and living in harmony with the environment.
Ever since, sustainability has started to
n 1971, the German business professor Klaus Schwab brought leading executives from Western Europe to a small town in the Swiss Alps. Schwab asked these corporate leaders to consider the impact of their businesses on all of their stakeholders – not just customers and investors, but the societies within their sphere of influence. This ethos
Businesses today face
Impact investing is a specific approach of “investing for the common good” alongside ethical investing, sustainable investing, socially responsible investing (SRI), and environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing. Although they are often grouped together in everyday conversation and media coverage, there are different methodologies associated with each of these approaches.
The Global Impact Investors Network (GIIN)
There’s a story about the 1969 Apollo moon landing that I haven’t been able to confirm. It may well be apocryphal. But it’s a good story, nonetheless.
Solving the most pressing issues of our time has a colossal price tag. Today, the global impact investing market has reached $502 billion – which is excellent – but that’s nowhere near the $5 to $7 trillion that’s needed to achieve the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals over the coming decade. Whether it’s feeding the
As global leaders prepare to discuss progress in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals at the U.N. High Level Policy Forum (HLPF) in early July, the holy grail of the agenda—eradicating extreme poverty—may well seem elusive and complex. On the one hand, there is much to celebrate: Since 2016, according to the World Poverty Clock,
“Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door,” argued Ralph Waldo Emerson, the 19th century US lecturer, philosopher, and essayist. In other words, if scientists and engineers invent a better solution to something, scaling and deployment will happen automatically.
Although Emerson was writing in the 19th century, we are still
Cambridge University’s Investment Leaders Group has developed a framework that allows investors to measure the impact of their investments against the Sustainable Development Goals.
The Investment Leaders Group (ILG), a global network of pension funds, insurers and asset managers convened by the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), has created a dashboard, called the Cambridge Impact
More than three years into the pursuit of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), not one country is on track to achieve them by the 2030 deadline. This conclusion, reached in a recent Brookings Institution report, highlights the enormous human costs associated with not meeting these goals, and implores countries to do more. With heads of
Successful businesses continuously update their knowledge of what customers want. Walmart collects more than 2.5 million gigabytes of customer data per hour and Yelp users post 26,380 reviews per minute. So why do many impact investors, who seek social, environmental, and economic returns on patient timelines, park customer insight at the door when they want to achieve multiple
“We are past, ‘Should we?’ The question now is, ‘How?’” At a recent event in New York, New York, Mehmood Kahn, chief scientific officer at Pepsico, framed the challenge on the mind of many company leaders who have committed to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In other words, the ambition is set, but how will companies deliver?
The
Can the world end poverty by 2030, the target set by the United Nations Agenda for Sustainable Development? The UN General Assembly recently reaffirmed this deadline but conceded that meeting it will require “accelerating global actions” to tackle poverty’s causes. As the international community explores new solutions, lessons
Investors are increasingly aware of the system-level effects of their investments. In a previous post I have written about how the very large asset owners and asset managers have to consider whether their investments are making a positive or negative contribution to the financial, environmental, and social systems that support human life on