Sustainable Development Goals: Company polish – or company core?

There are different levels of integration of SDGs in a business.

A key element is understanding the difference in terms of whether this is something you do to polish the company or its existing products? This is probably where a company looks at the goals and says “we are already doing much of what the SDGs are asking for – and isn’t this terrific!”.

Where based on poor evaluation, documentation and performance, then it is likely be to greenwashing.

Or is it about adjusting the core business of the company – in a direction towards what the world has agreed to are fundamental needs?

Here, you will see companies using the SDG priorities to translate into forward leaning corporate strategy and innovation.

The proof is in the result here – does a company follow through on its supposed alignment with the SDGs?

By end of the day, however, we need methodologies to measure the impact of business solutions in a SDG context, where actual impact is determined, compared and evaluated for the degree of impact on achieving a SDG.

Once we have this capability, then we will be able to fully distinguish greenwashing from authentic contribution to the SDGs.

The Global Goals will only be realized if a large amount of companies decide to make it core business to achieve on them. And market mechanisms need to be designed accordingly.

When it comes to the SDGs, we are not talking light-weight issues that need sorting – but massive challenges.