BUS604: Innovation and Sustainability

In 2015, governments took two urgent steps to transform the nature of development so that it meets the Brundtland standard of sustainability. One was the Paris climate change agreement, which set out an agenda and timetable for nations to make the structural shift to low-carbon economies. It aims to keep the world well below two degrees of global warming and to help the most vulnerable communities to adapt. The other step was governments' agreement to achieve 17 Global Goals for Sustainable Development by 2030. (Exhibit 4) 

These 17 Global Goals and their 169 component targets have been designed from the bottom up to build the kind of future that most people want, where there is no poverty, the planet is protected and all people enjoy peace and prosperity. 

The goals fall into two main areas – social and environmental. Some of the social goals aim to meet basic needs. They include ending extreme poverty and hunger and ensuring universal access to healthcare, clean water and sanitation. Others advance other human rights, empowering people through quality education, gender equality, employment, and decent work, reduced inequalities, and innovations in industry and infrastructure so people prosper and feel valued. 

The wide range of environmental goals aims to keep the world within key planetary safety boundaries through changing how the economy works across the globe. They cover climate change, access to affordable and clean energy, sustainable consumption and production, and biodiversity on land and below water, treating oceans as vital global commons. 

The final two goals focus on values and governance. Goal 16 concerns peace, justice, and institutions, and Goal 17 describes the need for a "global partnership for sustainable development".

Together the 17 goals form an integrated package. The environmental goals cannot be delivered without the social goals and vice versa. Efforts to eradicate poverty without protecting "natural capital" are doomed to failure partly because the lives of so many poor people depend on natural resources. By the same token, progress towards the two degrees warming limit and the Global Goals will together in effect "reboot" the world's economic systems, making normal business activity intrinsically sustainable, socially fair and environmentally stable.

However, progress needs to go much, much faster to get the world onto a sustainable track. Economic choices already made condemn the world to further warming of at least one degree. Without a huge shift towards low-carbon economies in the next 5-10 years, it will be too late to keep below the two-degree danger threshold. The World Bank estimates that failure to take action now to halt climate change puts 100 million people at risk of falling back into poverty by 2030.