Sustainability in Business and Economics Reading Material
Week 46 – Desai et al. – The Need for Innovations to Implement the SDGs
In 2015 the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was set. The agenda was a plan of
action for people, planet and prosperity. 17 goals and 169 targets. All national governments reached
the agreements with support of many stakeholders. But overarching action plans were not set.
Agenda 2030 is about stimulating change, because everyone agrees that a business-as-usual
approach will not suffice. Our purpose in compiling the essays in this volume is to offer practical
suggestions for innovations that could and should be adopted to bring about necessary change.
Where are we? SDG Trends and Gaps
The Millennium Development Goals created progress on measures of health and education. A starting
point for the SDGs in the final stretch in ending extreme poverty. The global trend of progress is slow
as an increasing share of the world’s remaining extreme poverty is concentrated in countries with slow
rates of progress and high population growth.
- Among developing countries, the challenges of extreme poverty and basic needs are closely
related to the SDG challenge of ending preventable child and maternal deaths.
- Many of the countries facing the deepest poverty challenges also have fragile public institutions.
But there are opportunities for progress.
- But the sustained expansion of many fast-growing countries is driving a realignment of the world
economy and its geopolitics. See emerging Asia.
- Across high-income countries, the share of people reporting inadequate income to buy food
throughout the year has been stagnant
Recouple Economic Growth and Social ‘Good”: The Case for Inclusion
To leave no one behind. Whether the issue is gender, indigenous status, ethnicity, religion, sexual
orientation, geography, class, migration status, or some other aspect of identity, every country in the
world is grappling with the policy challenges of inclusion and with political tensions resulting from
exclusion.
- The new middle-class people need expansion of infrastructure to support their livelihoods,
including energy, transport, and housing infrastructure, all of which present a challenge to
achieving the environmental sustainability goals.
- Few countries in recent years have been able to achieve economic growth along with a
distribution perceived as fair to all. Looking across countries at changes in the Gini coefficient
shows that just as many countries saw improvements in their Gini coefficients as saw a
deterioration.
Decouple Economic Growth and Environmental ‘Bads’: The Case for Ecology
- One stark feature of the current global economy is the dramatic strain humanity is placing on
Earth’s natural assets. For most of the twentieth century, economic growth was fueled by growth
in energy use.
- A related challenge lies in the world’s oceans with higher acidity and temperature, mass
extinctions, depleting fish stocks and biodiversity. Plastic enhances the problem.
These challenges draw attention to the need for better management of the global commons as a
central element of the SDG agenda.
Structural Challenges at the National Level: Communication, Measurement, Coordination
The SDGs require governments to focus on issues at home and abroad and think about all segments
of the populations.
A separate challenge lies in acquiring the appropriate data to inform that pursuit. The world’s data are
insufficient to track meaningfully what is working and what needs to change.
Specific pathways for actions need to be described. The SDGs are helpful in drawing attention to
these types of structural interconnections. The UN has provided a framework. It is up to local leaders
of the public and private sectors and civil society to forge the practical connections and solutions
within their own geographic and operational domains.
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Structural Challenges at the Global Level: Multilateralism Under Stress
The gaps between those made prosperous and those left behind by economic and technological
progress are widening and becoming more difficult to manage. Ongoing political developments are
heightening fears that an era of ‘de-globalisation’ is upon is. Trade wars, anti-immigration parties and
anti-globalist populists. These political strains are contributing to multilateral gaps:
1. Gaps in Institutional Assistance. Since 2015, rich countries’ aid spending on the least developed
countries has fallen. Even private investment in infrastructure projects has fallen. Financing form
the SDGs must come from ‘beyond aid’. E.g. blending official and private aid for instrastructure.
2. Gaps in Collective Action. With the SDGs we may need new institutions, technologies, policies
and partnerships. Meanwhile, some major issues don’t yet have a proper multilateral governance
structure (e.g. threats beneath the ocean surface). Thus new forms of regional and global
cooperation are essential.
3. Gaps in Peer Learning. International cooperation will be needed to bolster peer learning. Local
governments and market players will need to collaborate to promote new forms of progress.
Knowledge sharing rather than providing financial resources.
Upgrading the SDG Action Plan: A Focus on Changing Trajectories
Detailed data need to be made available by country, locality, and, often, community. Strategies, plans,
and resource distribution must accord with the granular picture or else efforts will be dissipated over a
variety of worthy but less impactful activities.
Non State Actors
While it is true that the SDGs represent an intergovernmental consensus, it does not follow that
implementation is solely the responsibility of government. Implementation have to reach beyond
governments. E.g. private credit, capital markets, companies that comply with economic, social and
governance standards. The trick will be to get widespread business engagement in new leadership,
new partnerships, new technologies, and new approaches.
Innovations for Breakthroughs (Overview of the Chapters)
We asked experts in their fields to think about issues where breakthroughs are needed or where not
enough attention has been given to a topic.
Innovations in Capturing Value
Growth alone does not deliver sustainability precisely because it is driven by profit maximization while
ignoring other social priorities.
- Public investment in care services for new-borns, infants, and the elderly can reduce the burden
of unpaid care on women and boost their labour participation. Also access to financial services.
- The full breadth of SDG ambitions cannot be realized without large-scale contributions from
private business, which can help both by innovating new solutions and by minimizing problematic
actions.
- A domestic agency dedicated to sustainable infrastructure is a necessary but by no means
sufficient condition for success.
Innovations in Place-Based Targeting
The SDG implementation involves making investments and policy choices that affect specific places.
E.g. even though most of those being left behind reside in rural areas, there is no specific SDG target
that focuses on the rural dimensions of development.
- Public policies need to regulate and facilitate supply chain relationships that can link smallholder
farmers, including women and youth, to urban areas. Policymakers should think in terms of spatial
policies that connect these together.
With 169 SDG targets, the burden of data collection and analysis in monitoring SDG progress can be
substantial for all countries, rich or poor (limited personnel and resources).
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- As hosts to more than half of humanity, cities across the globe can serve as the front line for
targeting SDG efforts on an extraordinary breadth of issues, ranging from reducing traffic deaths
to mitigating the effects of climate change.
Innovations in Multi-stakeholder Governance
The third area ripe for innovation is governance. Multi-stakeholder governance starts with common
understandings to inform collective action.
Conclusion
When the SDGs were adopted, there was hope that implementation would take off rapidly, based on
successful planning and institutional experiences established under the MDGs. While some sectors
and geographic areas have moved faster than others, much more effort is needed to shift the world
from a business-as-usual regimen. It is becoming increasingly clear that new approaches are needed,
globally, nationally, and locally, to accelerate implementation in many areas. These new approaches
are untested and will require a period of innovation and experimentation.
Week 46 – Sachs et al. – Six Transformations to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals
The SDG and Paris Agreement on Climate Change call for global cooperation and deep
transformations in every country with complementary actions by governments, civil society, science
and business. The SDGs focus on time-bound targets for Prosperity, People, Planet, Peace and
Partnership.
How should the implementation of the SDGs be organized? Many policy interventions are needed to
achieve each SDG. We introduce six SDG transformations as modular building-blocks of SDG
achievement. Each transformation engages a different subset of business and civil society. Each SDG
Transformation describes a major change in societal structure (economic, political, technological and
social) to achieve long-term sustainable development. Each contributes to multiple SDGs. The
Transformations work at global, regional and national scales.
1. Education, gender and inequality
a. Countries need to expand and transform education systems. Universal quality primary and
secondary school education is needed. Improve the school-to-work transition. Together they
build human capital.
b. Expand social safety nets to reduce inequalities. Increase labour standards and anti-
discrimination.
c. To boost economic growth and lower inequalities; innovation and R&D needed.
This requires close coordination between ministries of education, science and technology and
social affairs. Box 1
2. Health, well-being and demography
a. Universal health coverage based on a publicly financed health system and focus on primary
health. Improvements in child health, reproductive health, disease control.
Outside of the health sector healthy lifestyles could be promoted, (better hygiene, safe sex, no
alcohol/tabacco, better infrastructure to reduce accidents, labour standards). Box 1
3. Energy decarbonisation and sustainable industry
Close coordination among ministries (building, energy, environment, transport) needed.
a. Providing acces to modern energy, fuels for cooking, heating.
b. Shifting from fossil to zero-carbon sources, improve energy efficiency in final use
(transport, heating, cooling), electrification of current uses of fossil fuels outside the power
generation (engines, hydrogen, boilers, heaters)
c. Managing industrial pollutants of air, water and land.
One trade-off can arise from using scarce resources and sustainable growth.
Box 1 and 2
4. Sustainable food, land, water and oceans
Land-use and food systems lead to persistent hunger, malnutrition and obesity. Greenhouse
gasses, losses of biodiversity, pollution, vulnerable to climate change and land degradation. This
transformation has the highest potential for trade-offs across interventions. Strategies to be
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