Global Goals Yearbook 2018
The future of the United Nations is more uncertain than at any time before. Like his predecessors, UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, has promised to reform the United Nations. Drivers are two major agreements: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Climate Accord. Both stand for a move away from statal top-down multilateralism towards new form of partnership between the public and the private sector as well as the civil society. The Global Goals Yearbook, published under the auspices of the macondo foundation, therefore covers „Partnership for the Goals“ as its 2018 main topic. Our world is truly not sustainable at this time. To make the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development a success story, we need an enormous increase in effort. This cannot happen without help from the private sector. But businesses need a reason to contribute as well as attractive partnerships that are based on win-win constellations. We have no alternative but to rethink the role that public–private partnerships can play in this effort. That is why United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres is calling upon UN entities to strengthen and better align their private-sector engagement. In every change there is a new chance. The Global Goals Yearbook 2018 discusses the multiple aspects of how private sector engagement can be improved. Recommendations are, among others, to revise multilaterism, partnership models and processes and to invest more in trust, a failure culture as well as metrics and monitoring. When businesses engage in partnerships for the Goals, this is more than just signing checks. It means inserting the “do good” imperative of the SDGs into corporate culture, business cases, innovation cycles, investor relationships, and, of course, the daily management processes and (extra-)financial reporting. The Yearbook includes arguments from academic and business experts, the World Bank and the Club of Rome as well as UN entities, among them UNDP, UNSSC, UNOPS, UN JIU, and UN DESA.
The future of the United Nations is more uncertain than at any time before. Like his predecessors, UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, has promised to reform the United Nations. Drivers are two major agreements: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Climate Accord. Both stand for a move away from statal top-down multilateralism towards new form of partnership between the public and the private sector as well as the civil society. The Global Goals Yearbook, published under the auspices of the macondo foundation, therefore covers „Partnership for the Goals“ as its 2018 main topic.
Our world is truly not sustainable at this time. To make the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development a success story, we need an enormous increase in effort. This cannot happen without help from the private sector. But businesses need a reason to contribute as well as attractive partnerships that are based on win-win constellations.
We have no alternative but to rethink the role that public–private partnerships can play in this effort. That is why United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres is calling upon UN entities to strengthen and better align their private-sector engagement. In every change there is a new chance.
The Global Goals Yearbook 2018 discusses the multiple aspects of how private sector engagement can be improved. Recommendations are, among others, to revise multilaterism, partnership models and processes and to invest more in trust, a failure culture as well as metrics and monitoring.
When businesses engage in partnerships for the Goals, this is more than just signing checks. It means inserting the “do good” imperative of the SDGs into corporate culture, business cases, innovation cycles, investor relationships, and, of course, the daily management processes and (extra-)financial reporting.
The Yearbook includes arguments from academic and business experts, the World Bank and the Club of Rome as well as UN entities, among them UNDP, UNSSC, UNOPS, UN JIU, and UN DESA.
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RETHINKING PARTNERSHIPS<br />
Act<br />
Plan<br />
Check<br />
Do<br />
He says that companies that charge<br />
prices over the cost of manufacturing<br />
are “greedy.” Shrugging it off, others<br />
told me that it is typical of the “old<br />
school” staff. Melissen and Kamhof<br />
write: “Companies have a sui generis<br />
take on strategic action: Their business<br />
models are about profit-making, and<br />
sustainability aims are not supposed<br />
to stand in the way of commercial objectives.<br />
SDG policies that depend on<br />
collaboration by concrete companies<br />
have the best chance of becoming successful<br />
if they are commercially viable<br />
– which is not a typical concern of the<br />
public sector.”<br />
Lack of trust is often indicated by a<br />
lack of language. Many public–private<br />
meetings are described by some observers<br />
to be like having cats and dogs in<br />
one room. Others complain that the<br />
way civil society – and even UN officials<br />
– talk about the private sector<br />
is alien and sometimes even downright<br />
hostile to many business executives.<br />
There are, of course, other experiences,<br />
such as the <strong>Global</strong> Compact Leaders<br />
Summits, where top-level CEOs and<br />
politicians meet. In these events, the<br />
altitude of the discussions is so high and<br />
the arguments so abstract that everyone<br />
agrees. Of course, no one would speak<br />
in favor of child labor or poverty. But<br />
when it comes to concrete talks at the<br />
downstream level, the true conflicts<br />
come to light.<br />
Scott Jerbi demands: “If UN agencies and<br />
programs want to get their work with<br />
outside partners right, more must be<br />
done to foster the right sort of institutional<br />
culture. This means helping staff<br />
develop the skills they need and setting<br />
clear terms for partnership initiatives,<br />
beginning with adherence to the UN<br />
Guiding Principles on Business and<br />
Human Rights.”<br />
An asymmetrical world needs asymmetrical<br />
partnerships<br />
1. THE United Nations do not exist, but THE<br />
business does not exist either<br />
When we look at partnerships of UN<br />
entities with the private sector in many<br />
– maybe most – cases, it is a cooperation<br />
with a multinational enterprise. Of<br />
course, these enterprises have capacities,<br />
scale, and money. But partnerships with<br />
Fortune 500 players from the northern<br />
hemisphere will not be enough. Cooperations<br />
with small and medium-sized<br />
enterprises (SMEs) are unused treasures<br />
– and imagine the potential. SMEs are<br />
responsible for 80 percent of value added<br />
as well as 80 percent of jobs around<br />
the world!<br />
That also applies to the UN: The UN<br />
system has many fragmented coordination<br />
and development policy functions.<br />
Each organization within the UN family<br />
has its own needs and potentials.<br />
We definitely need more coordination<br />
and integration. In the past for companies,<br />
the UN <strong>Global</strong> Compact was the<br />
entry point for cooperation with the<br />
UN. “While extremely laudable in their<br />
work, it is unclear that [they] could drive<br />
the scale of partnership transformation<br />
needed to implement the SDGs,” writes<br />
New York University expert Sarah Cliffe.<br />
Therefore, with the <strong>Global</strong> <strong>Goals</strong> used as<br />
a common umbrella, companies could<br />
– and should – use the opportunity of<br />
partnerships with other UN organizations.<br />
These entities, on the other hand,<br />
should be more strategic in selecting<br />
their partners.<br />
The risk of getting this wrong is serious:<br />
If PPPs are not properly managed, they<br />
can worsen the situation and increase<br />
existing inequalities. >><br />
<strong>Global</strong> <strong>Goals</strong> <strong>Yearbook</strong> <strong>2018</strong><br />
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