BUS604: Innovation and Sustainability

Tackling the issues at the heart of the SDGs is a job too big for a single organization or nation. This is a chance for purposeful dialogue - for governments to engage their citizens, for businesses to find out what the public needs.

Build Collaboration Into The Institutional Response

Developing strong partnerships between policy makers, national statistical offices, businesses, and communities sits at the centre of measuring what matters and brings multiple benefits. For example, community level data can help businesses identify what society -and therefore consumers - need, while the data generated by businesses for regulatory purposes is critical for assisting national policy makers spot emerging trends or barriers to progress. Building a national dialogue involving all segments of society can build a common direction, provide a clear signal of intent and create ownership for the outcomes achieved.

Example Colombia's Partnership Approach

Colombia has adopted a multi-stakeholder approach to build consensus and create alignment around the adoption of the SDGs and the measurement of progress. This has highlighted three important lessons, critical to successful engagement:

1. Top level buy-in is needed to show the importance of the Goals and the approach adopted - in Colombia's case, this leadership comes from President Santos and is reflected in ministerial and director representation on the High Level Inter-Institutional Commission established to drive integration
2. Build a structure that facilitates dialogue and a partnership approach across all stakeholder groups - The Inter- Institutional Commission, supported by a technical committee, has the mandate to interface with stakeholders from civil society, private sector, academia, media, and international entities.
3. Set policies and indicators at a local level - Colombia's experience highlights the need to ensure national level indicators are translated into local policies and measures of progress to ensure ownership and responsiveness to community needs

Empower National Statistical Bodies

National Statistical Offices have always been a key functionary in generating data to monitor and manage sustainable development at the national level. But to respond to the SDG priorities, governments will need to empower national statistical offices to become curators of a wider data ecosystem of users and providers.

Partner With Purpose

A wide range of partnerships are being formed to help address specific challenges associated with measurement of progress against the SDGs. This ranges from data partnerships to close information gaps, for example working with telecoms companies to provide big data insights, through to multi-sector partnerships focused on driving progress towards individual SDGs.

Example New Data Partnerships Emerge

The Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data is bringing together governments, businesses, standard setters, and civil society to share knowledge and create toolkits that can help to address major data gaps that prevent progress towards the SDGs. They have established five working groups to address these gaps:

• Data collaboratives: working on filling data gaps and improving accessibility and usefulness.
• Data roadmaps and toolbox: working with national and subnational levels to develop and implement whole- of-government, multi-stakeholder data roadmaps for sustainable development.
• Data principles and protocols: producing an inventory of existing principles, standards, protocols and agreements, and emerging practice in contracts and in other relationships to understand what else is needed.
• Data architectures: catalyzing the design and development of a data infrastructure to measure SDG progress.
• Resource mobilization and alignment: tracking the available tools and resources and sharing them with all stakeholders.

Example

Accountancy Profession Shows Leadership

Professional bodies have an opportunity to help integrate the SDGs into the core of business planning. For example the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) sees the SDGs as a 'clear and compelling articulation of public interest'. ICAEW aims to support all of its 145,000 chartered accountants to help businesses value public goods and support them to measure progress in alternative ways.

Aligning Metrics To Societal Demand: Guidance For Policy Makers

Unless national metrics of 'progress' connect to what citizens need and recognise they will struggle to take hold. In-country narratives on 'what matters' and the trade-offs and synergies between environmental, social, and economic issues are highly context-specific. Based on forty years of mainstreaming sustainable development into decision making, IIED has developed some key questions to support policy makers to align new metrics of progress with what people need.

Demand For Integrated Measures:

1. Identify what national/local decisions and issues are driving demand for new, integrated 'measures that matter' (for example, national development plans, green economy plans, low-carbon development plans).
2. Who is asking for new measures (for example, planning and/or environmental authorities; national statistical bureaus, NGOs and citizens' groups calling for transparency; businesses wanting a more stable policy environment)?

Supply Of Integrated Measures:

1. Identify what (new) integrated measures are being provided e g. natural capital accounts (NCA) and wellbeing measures.
2. Identify who is supplying or is able to supply these measures (for example: government statistical offices; monitoring and evaluation bodies in government and beyond; research groups; citizens groups; accounting projects such as Wealth Accounting and Valuation of Ecosystem Services (WAVES)).

Connect Supply And Demand:

Identify what systems or initiatives currently or potentially link the 'owners' together. Multi-stakeholder fora and new policy imperatives may be the potential catalysts for linking supply and demand.

Align Supply And Demand:

In what metrics and at what levels is there alignment across different initiatives, on both demand and supply side? What drives convergence - mainstreaming initiatives, top-down policy, broad public understanding, market conditions, etc?

Where are the barriers which exacerbate unhelpful fragmentation, in e.g.: different development or sustainability narratives, legal requirements; market standards; and reporting requirements? What drives misalignment: asymmetries of understanding, information and/or power; and differences from national to local levels?

Where has fragmentation been helpful in terms of innovation or drawing attention to SDG issues uncovered by most measurements? How can this innovation be mainstreamed? Who has the mandate for alignment and/or mainstreaming, or where could a mandate be created legitimately and effectively?

A Story Aligning Data Collection With People's Needs

In India, almost two thirds of the population - more than 800 million people - live in rural areas, and many of them are small-scale farmers. Changes in climate have decimated agricultural production, with some regions experiencing unprecedented droughts in the summer of 2014, threatening the food security of millions of people and hitting poor rural areas worst of all. In 2007 Airtel, the largest mobile network operator in India, launched the Green SIM card in partnership with the Indian Farmers' Fertilizer Cooperative (IFFCO), which produces and distributes fertilizers to 330 million people through a cooperative network. Green SIM offers voice and text agricultural information to Indian small-scale farmers, often living in remote areas of the country to help them improve agricultural practices and increase their yields.

Today 3.1 million people use the Green SIM to prepare for weather patterns, diversify crops and increase their yields. The Green SIM has brought business opportunities. The company reported that 5% of new rural mobile phone acquisitions came from the Green SIM card alone. Currently, 150,000 new users acquire this card each month, and 60% of customers stay on their Green SIMs for longer than 12 months. But business opportunities go beyond agriculture. In a survey carried out during 2012, subscribers indicated that they would also like to receive information related to education, health, and employment alongside the usual agricultural content".