As we are now two years into the Sustainable Development Goals, there are a growing number of resources and tools to help businesses engage in working towards, as well as reporting on the Goals within their own operations. These are resources that can be used in a classroom setting to help teach the SDGs, as a tool for students or faculty working with business on the SDGs, or as tools to develop new partnerships with business around the SDGS. Here are 10 resources put together by the Global Compact focused on business and the SDGs.
- Business Reporting on the SDGs: An Analysis of the Goals and Targets – This report is a first step towards a uniform mechanism for business to report on their contribution to and impact on the SDGs in an effective and standardized way. It contains a list of existing and established disclosures that businesses can use to report, and identifies relevant gaps, where disclosures are not available.
- The UN Global Compact-Accenture Strategy CEO Study 2016: Published every three years, this study is the largest analysis of CEO attitudes towards sustainability globally. It is based on interviews with over 50 CEOs of leading companies, and the 2016 study focuses on the path towards 2030 and the mandate for action that the UN Sustainable Development Goals layout.
- The SDG Compass: This tool guides companies on how they can align their strategies and manage their contribution to the realisation of the SDGs. The SDG Compass presents five steps that assist companies in maximizing their contribution to the SDGs: understanding the SDGs, defining priorities, goal setting, integrating sustainability, and reporting. It is available in 9 different languages.
- Project Breakthrough: Project Breakthrough aims to challenge and stretch prevailing business mindsets into new opportunity spaces. It puts a spotlight on the best thinking and examples in sustainable innovation that demonstrate a commitment towards an exponential scale of change and impact – across mainstream companies and next generation innovators and entrepreneurs.
- SDG Industry Matrix: These industry-specific reports highlight examples and ideas for corporate action in relation to the Sustainable Development Goals specifically related to those industries. Each matrix highlights bold pursuits and decisions made by diverse companies for each SDG. These are available for financial services, food and consumer goods, climate, health, industrial manufacturing, transportation and energy.
- Blueprint for Business Leadership on the SDGs: This report aims to inspire all businesses, regardless of their size or location, to take a leading role in the achievement of the SDGs. It illustrates how the five leadership qualities of Ambition, Collaboration, Accountability, Consistency and Intentional can be applied to a business’ strategy, business model, products, supply chain, partnerships and operations to raise the bar and create impact at scale.
- Making Global Goals Local Business: This report provides an overview of how the different Local Networks of the Global Compact are taking action to implement the Sustainable Development Goals. The report includes projects planned or in progress, and discusses how they are building national awareness of the Goals, aligning business models to the SDGs, collaborating across stakeholders, and getting business involved in policy discussions to push the Goals forward locally.
- The SDG Investment Case: Discussions taking place since the launch of the SDGs tend to focus on how investors can contribute to the SDGs. But how do you convince investors that they should be investing in the SDGs in the first place? This report looks at why the SDGs are relevant to institutional investors and why there is an expectation that investors will contribute, and how.
- Partnership Passport: This resource calls on companies everywhere (and why not business schools as well) to take action on the Sustainable Development Goals in partnership with the UN, Governments and civil society. The guide helps organisations to find new partnerships and enhance existing ones with 10 inspiring examples of UN-Business collaboration, tips to form your own partnerships, and directions for finding UN partners to work with.
- How Your Company Can Advance Each of the SDGs:
This page on the Global Compact website provides an overview of the 17 Goals with links to the different resources that the Global Compact offers to business focused on each of those Goals. Many of these resources are relevant to more than one SDGS given the cross cutting nature of all of these challenges, making this resource a useful guide to get your impact started.
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