Global Goals That Work

Over the last decade, there has been a proliferation of sustainability indexes and frameworks. This report attempts to bring greater alignment between actors and better ways to measure progress using our planet's health and people's well-being as the yardstick, rather than Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or profit alone. Read the report to learn how sustainability is measured at government, business, and societal levels, and how it can be aligned to the triple bottom line (people, planet, profit) and the SDGs.

Actions

Based on MWM research and consultations we suggest the following actions to help forge alignment between different measurement systems at the corporate, national, and global levels: 

For Government

  1. Benchmark national plans against the SDGs to identify gaps, alignments, and priorities.
  2. Convene stakeholders including national statistical bodies, business, investors, civil society, local authorities, and cities to build consensus around priorities and the measurement of progress.
  3. Strengthen the role and mandate of national statistical offices to help convene public and private organizations.
  4. Create an enabling policy environment for sharing of data across business, government, and civil society.
  5. Publish a multi-stakeholder national report on progress towards the SDGs with insights and data from all stakeholders.

For Business

  1. Conduct a Board level strategy session to consider the relevance of the SDGs to the business, identifying opportunities and risks.
  2. Benchmark current and future planned activities against the outcome of the Board strategy and define corporate goals, key performance indicators, and implementation plans in line with priorities identified.
  3. Establish Board and Senior Management oversight to support integration into decision making.
  4. Adopt emerging methodologies for measuring natural, social, and human capital to help identify and respond to impacts and dependencies along the value chain, sharing data with government, investors, and civil society.
  5. Disclose sustainability impacts and progress on the SDGs. and integrate sustainability information into the reporting cycle.

For Investors

  1. Assess portfolios against the SDGs to identify investment opportunities and respond to risks.
  2. Engage with investee companies and governments to understand their strategic response to the SDGs and use the information within investment decisions.
  3. Work with companies and other stakeholders to standardize approaches to measuring progress, improving data quality, comparability, and the ability to benchmark.
  4. Adopt emerging methodologies to enable impact of own investments to be monitored and reported to asset owners, beneficiaries, and other stakeholders.
  5. Track investment flows against the SDGs and publish evidence which demonstrates the impact of action on investment returns.

For Civil Society

  1. Benchmark corporate and national frameworks for measuring sustainability against the SDGs to identify gaps and opportunities for alignment.
  2. Support communities, particularly those working in the informal economy, to interpret the SDGs at a local level and define their own measurement systems and needs.
  3. Identify key data inequalities within countries.
  4. Partner with governments, particularly in developing countries, to build their capacity for measuring progress in alternative ways.
  5. Prioritize open data initiatives to address data inequalities and needs.