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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• The ability to correctly identify and select<br />
projects where PPPs would be viable.<br />
This would entail sound cost-benefit<br />
analysis and would be critical for reducing<br />
costs and enhancing welfare benefits.<br />
• The structuring of contracts to ensure<br />
an appropriate pricing and transfer<br />
of risks to private partners. This is a<br />
key requirement if PPPs are to deliver<br />
high-quality and cost-effective services<br />
to consumers and the government. This<br />
would depend on sufficient competition<br />
in the bidding process and also depend<br />
upon a transparent fiscal accounting<br />
and reporting standard.<br />
• Establishment of a comprehensive and<br />
transparent fiscal accounting and reporting<br />
standard for PPPs. This would allow<br />
for the comprehensive disclosure of<br />
all risks – including contingent fiscal<br />
liabilities and medium- and long-term<br />
implications – and discourage governments<br />
from placing PPP projects<br />
off-budget.<br />
• Ensuring legal, regulatory, and monitoring<br />
frameworks that ensure appropriate<br />
pricing and quality of service. Such<br />
frameworks would also need to ensure<br />
a competitive environment during the<br />
bidding process and take account of<br />
the broader welfare benefits of projects,<br />
including social externalities and the implications<br />
for sustainable development.<br />
Overall, by strengthening transparency<br />
and public scrutiny, and by safeguarding<br />
the public interest, an enabling<br />
institutional framework with the four<br />
abovementioned, interrelated capacities<br />
would also serve to reinforce democratic<br />
accountability and the popular acceptance<br />
of PPPs.<br />
For a number of developing countries,<br />
setting these institutional and governance<br />
capacities in place would require<br />
assistance from the international community<br />
in the form of technical support<br />
and capacity-building. A specific area<br />
where global action would be helpful is<br />
in discussions about an internationally<br />
accepted accounting and reporting standard<br />
that can promote transparency on the<br />
fiscal consequences of PPPs. This brings us<br />
to the issue of the need for further work<br />
in developing international guidelines for<br />
PPPs. In recent times, many important<br />
initiatives have been underway at the<br />
national and international levels. There<br />
nevertheless remains a strong need to<br />
pull together these various initiatives and<br />
reevaluate them in an inclusive manner<br />
Project<br />
selection and<br />
implementation<br />
Credible<br />
cost-benefit<br />
analysis<br />
Contracts to<br />
price and<br />
transfer risks<br />
in light of the 2030 Agenda. The commitment<br />
of world leaders during the Third<br />
International Conference on Financing<br />
for Development (which took place in Addis<br />
Ababa in July 2015) to hold “inclusive,<br />
open, and transparent discussions when<br />
developing and adopting guidelines and<br />
documentation for the use of PPPs, and<br />
to build a knowledge-base and share lessons<br />
learned through regional and global<br />
forums” is an important step forward. As<br />
the most universal international forum<br />
for international policymaking, the UN<br />
can play a key role in forging these new<br />
guidelines for PPPs, which should fully<br />
support the implementation of the 2030<br />
Agenda for Sustainable Development.<br />
Institutional Framework for PPPs<br />
Optimum<br />
risk<br />
allocation<br />
Fiscal accounting<br />
and reporting<br />
standards<br />
Transparency<br />
on fiscal<br />
implications<br />
Value for Money!<br />
Delivering higher-quality and efficient savings in<br />
comparison to public provision<br />
Ensuring proper governance and democratic<br />
accountability of PPPs<br />
Legal, regulatory,<br />
and monitoring<br />
frameworks<br />
Safeguarding<br />
citizens‘ welfare<br />
and sustainable<br />
development<br />
Source: Author<br />
40 <strong>Global</strong> <strong>Goals</strong> <strong>Yearbook</strong> <strong>2018</strong>
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