How consumer companies can help deliver a sustainable future
As sustainability expectations rise, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide clear targets, but progress isn’t straightforward. In brief Consumers …
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS) were agreed in 2015 by world leaders across 193 countries. The SDGs are a universal framing with the goal to address our largest social, economic, and environmental issues by 2030. There are 17 goals each with specific targets within them totalling to 169 targets in total. These goals are for everyone and including businesses.
Businesses' success is also dependent on the success of these goals. What do we mean by this?
Environmental and social challenges are an increasing risk and cost for businesses and can limit business growth. Focusing on SDGs is a fantastic way to future-proof business. Doing so allows you to stay ahead of the curve, ahead of incoming regulations, reverse or prevent certain risks, and gain a competitive advantage (particularly as customers and investors care more about how businesses operate and contribute to society).
Invest in your future. Aligning your strategic business goals with the SDGs can unlock huge opportunities according to a study of global business and finance leaders and looking at just four areas within these 17 goals of energy, cities, agriculture and health there are at least $12 trillion in market opportunities by 2030 and the potential to create up to 380 million jobs.
Engaging in the goals is also a good way to build trust with key stakeholders including customers, local communities, general public, governments, investors, regulators and more. SDGs are an incredible strategic opportunity for business. Clearly linking your ESG work with financial outcomes is key for value creation, and SDGs can be a great way to do that.
The more engaged your business is with society, the more social value you create, the more you nurture your contribution and impact on the environment, the more value you create for shareholders, customers and wider stakeholders - creating a positive loop not only for society but for your financial outcomes too.
Almost half of the world is under 30 years old which presents many exciting opportunities for everyone. You exist to provide the best possible opportunities, experiences, and next steps for young people and young adults and the SDGs provide a great inspirational platform for the youth and community sector. The SDGs are particularly exciting for anyone focusing on youth social action delivery. (Check out #iwill's definition of high quality social action below)
They can provide ideas for projects, activities, and initiatives that can directly contribute to these goals but also provide fantastic ways for young people to grow and develop and discover new topics and areas of interest. Utilising the SDGs to empower your young people is also a fantastic way to champion and put into practice great quality diversity, equity, and inclusion work.
Check out this video by the United Nations on youth realising the SDGs.
What is high quality social action?
What does great youth social action look like? Research suggests that high quality activities will meet six principles including:
1. Be youth-led
2. Be challenging
3. Have social impact
4. Allow progression to other opportunities
5. Be embedded in a young person’s life
6. Enable reflection about the value of the activity
The higher the quality of the social action, the more likely it is to benefit both the young people involved and the communities or causes they are trying to help.
1. Be youth-led
2. Be challenging
3. Have social impact
4. Allow progression to other opportunities
5. Be embedded in a young person’s life
6. Enable reflection about the value of the activity
The higher the quality of the social action, the more likely it is to benefit both the young people involved and the communities or causes they are trying to help.
Future funding
If you can showcase the impact of your work it will be easier to secure more funding as investors or grant makers want to see the outputs and outcomes of what they are providing finance to. The more you can invest in monitoring, evaluation and impact can help with this. Implementing or utilising the SDGs can be an innovative way contribute to this important piece of work that will be recognisable to stakeholders across various sectors.
How Known Impact can connect people via the SDGs
As the Known Impact community and network grows, where businesses are working with SDGs we want to monitor which SDG areas our community engages with and focuses on the most. We want to see how they interlink and where we could generate the most impact with the collective resources we find in our network. Every goal is interlinked, which means the solutions to achieving one goal can also be found in another.
Once these solutions are tapped into it unlocks gains for all involved. Known Impact believes the same about challenges across sectors. On the surface the private sector and youth and community sectors may seem very different however there are many overlapping opportunities and resources.
The SDGs have a deadline of 2030. The deadline is fast approaching and we have faced many global challenges in the last few years which had added challenges to this, but we can still do this and generate a great impact towards the SDGs by 2030. In September 2019, António Guterres, the United Nations Secretary-General asked all sectors to mobilise for a ‘decade of action‘ across three areas:
- Global action to establish better leadership, more resources and more intelligent solutions for the SDGs
- Local action to support how we embed changes and transitions that will occur across institutions, budgets, policies, regulation and more.
- People action including action by youth, the private sector, civil societies, the media, unions, educational institutions, and more to spark an unstoppable movement to push and demand for needed transformations.
We want to use this call to action to supercharge ideas and solutions by bringing youth and the private sectors together. As everything is interconnected the possibilities are endless.Known Impact wants to focus on people power to drive more intelligent and creative solutions for businesses and the youth sector that also feed into the SDGs and focusing here we can support you in establishing better leadership in your areas to be ahead of the curve in your sectors.
The SDGs are a great visual and recognisable tool – they have a lot of potential and we want to ensure they are better embedded in social impact work across sectors. We can support businesses in how to better utilise them in your work. Learn about social impact and check out these resources to get started.
The SDGs are a great visual and recognisable tool – they have a lot of potential and we want to ensure they are better embedded in social impact work across sectors. We can support businesses in how to better utilise them in your work. Learn about social impact and check out these resources to get started.
Social Development Goals Resources
Business
Youth
Why young people are key to achieving the SDGs
Young people today face considerable challenges in creating a bright future for themselves. In high-income economies, young people’s prospects have plummeted, …
Youth
SMEs and the Youth Labour Market Report
In the context of the current labour market, young people are being disproportionately hit by the economic fallout from the …
Businesses and organisations can positively contribute to these goals whether it be one or many.
In working collaboratively between businesses and the youth sector and businesses supporting the youth sector with its resources, networks, and knowledge it will already be contributing to specific targets within these goals, however with innovative ideas and real projects being designed and implemented by young people and businesses looking for creative ideas to test and fund there is huge potential in what can be generated here.
Whether you are a small business or a large corporation, a local youth group or a national youth organisation. If anything you have read here has sparked a bit of curiosity save the questions for us and reach out so we can show you what’s possible.
How to use the SDGS
Each goal is broad and therefore has more specific targets within them. (View them here by clicking on ‘more info’ on each goal and then ‘targets and indicators’). So when we talk about them at Known Impact we want to make sure we are being more specific about what exactly it is we are focusing on to also help you when you measure your impact internally and with your stakeholders.We can support businesses and youth and community organisations in how to utilise them in your work better and check out our resources to get started.
