The UN Sustainable Development Goals and Business
This article discusses how one company, Novozymes, successfully aligned its purpose, strategy, and long-term targets directly with the SDGs. Novozymes says the SDGs are a gift to business because the economic rewards for delivering on the SDGs are very significant. Read this article to find out more about Novozyme's journey to SDG alignment and its many benefits.
4. How to unfold and sustain the "SDG gift to business" - step by step
The SDG's most likely represent the best long term strategic market outlook ever put in front of business. The distance from the high level political agreements to real market impact may seem long, uncertain, and overwhelming to some. However, if only just half of what the SDGs suggest will materialize by 2030, then the SDGs still represent the best long term market guidance we have ever had before us.
Many of companies seem to share those views and have already embraced the SDGs in many ways. That is good news and a good start. However, to achieve the SDGs it will require that most companies do things differently, and in many cases, do different things.
To some companies the SDG agenda will entail increased risks to their business, because of future regulations or bad will from consumers caused by "SDG un-fit" products or business practices. To other companies the SDG agenda will drive added costs. This is very likely for companies with "SDG un-fit" energy supply systems or raw material needs. To a third group of companies, who deliver "SDG-fit" solutions from the core of their business, the SDGs will drive market growth.
Many companies are still struggling to get it right and to define their next steps to align their strategies with the SDGs and to measure and manage their impacts.
A number of step-by step tools are available online for free to support those processes – for example the SDG Compass, developed by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), the U.N. Global Compact, and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD). Such stepwise procedures will be relevant to any company no matter what the SDG motives are (risk, cost, opportunity) or what industry or geography it operates in.
And finally, the really good news is that the SDGs are not really a new agenda. The SDG agenda is in its essence just the "old sustainability agenda" made easier. With the SDG's in place we now have a much clearer set of long term global priorities with political tail wind and we have much stronger alignment between policy makers, civil society, and the private sector. The SDGs are a great gift to business!