3 steps to enhancing business engagement in the sustainable development agenda

USCIB's Ariel Meyerstein, VP for Labor Affairs, Corporate Responsibility and Corporate Governance offered a few thoughts on Devex for the three next critical steps for enhancing business engagement in the 2030 sustainable development agenda.

In the post, Meyerstein called for three steps at both the global and national levels:  

• National governments should organize cross-ministry working groups and begin convening stakeholders — including business and civil society — to collaboratively assess and identify their priorities.
• Corporate reporting frameworks should be considered and integrated - or at the least acknowledged - by the official UN indicator processes.  As Meyerstein notes,

[h]ow can we discuss achieving the targets on biodiversity, sustainable consumption and production patterns or financial inclusion without considering corporate reporting on these and other issues? How can we do it without some interaction between ‘official’ member state or U.N. agency statistics and other data?  We would be missing the bulk of the story on a good number of targets and missing a chance to redirect both government and business resources to filling gaps as we identify them along this 15-year journey. 

• Finally, Meyerstein observes that the "crucial question" member states need to answer for business is what the role of the private sector will be in the ongoing intergovernmental discussions about follow-up and review?  He proposes that what is needed is a "more empowered business focal point" for both deliberations and ongoing coordination between sectors.  Such a focal point would be helpful as a resource to both UN agencies and member states looking for the business community's views on pressing issues or seeking partners for projects.  It could also serve a critical role as a liaison for companies looking for guidance through the labyrinth of UN agencies. Such enhanced coordination will be essential to catalyzing more robust and effective partnerships in the next 15 years.

Read more at Devex.

On #MDG 8, tech transfer and the next 15 years: it's all about enabling environments

The Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Gap Task Force released its last report on MDG 8 - the Global Partnerships for Sustainable Development - this past week.

It contains some very candid remarks about the role of MDG 8 in stimulating technology transfer vs. what has naturally occurred globally through the global diffusion of ICT:

Perhaps the most dramatic and unexpected development tracked by the Task Force took place in the global diffusion of information and communications technologies (ICTs) that Goal 8 sought to promote. The spread of mobile telephone subscriptions rose from 10 per cent of the population in developing countries in 2000 to about 90 per cent in 2014. Internet access is lagging (only 32 per cent of the people in these countries have Internet access thus far), but it can be expected to continue to grow rapidly based on the spread of mobile broadband access. It would be inaccurate to claim that inclusion in Goal 8 was responsible for the impressive spread of mobile phone technology. Capable enterprises saw an opportunity for profitable expansion of their industry and, enabled by supportive policy environments, were able to act on that incentive. Equally capable pharmaceutical enterprises did not spread affordable essential medicines throughout the developing world because profit incentives led them in other directions—except in instances where policy pressures and the glare of public opinion had an impact, as in the case of HIV/AIDS medications. Coupled with the observations above on ODA, trade and debt, it is clear that the “partnership” element in the global partnership for development is first and foremost a partnership among States.1 However, it is also clear that mobilized public advocacy has been essential in moving Governments to take direct actions and adopt policy frameworks that may translate into effective means of implementation of the international goals and targets. The Task Force intended that its reports help in this regard.

Definitely worth thinking about carefully as we head into the 2030 sustainable development era and Goal 17 and its proposal for a Technology Facilitation Mechanism.

How are we going to measure productivity (in Goal 8 and elsewhere) anyway? Good question...

Dr. Dirk Willem te Velde tackles these thorny measurement questions over at the Business Fights Poverty SDG Zone here.

He looks into how we will come up with metrics on productivity for the following Goals/targets:

• double agricultural productivity by 2030 (2.3);
• achieve higher levels of economic productivity through diversification, technological upgrading and innovation, including through a focus of high-value added and labour-intensive sectors (8.2); and
• promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation and by 2030 raise industry’s share of employment and gross domestic employment, in line with national circumstances, and double its share in least developed countries (9.2)

Drawing on research underway at the Overseas Development Institute, te Velde offers some initial proposals:

Using labour productivity and its decompositions is a useful step towards an SDG indicator.  One can argue about the appropriate labour productivity target for 2015-2030, but one option would be to extrapolate estimates for sub-Saharan African countries which range between 2-3% annual growth over the last decade, with structural change contributing around 0.75%.

A labour productivity target for the poorest countries will help to set an important signal to countries on the need to transform their economies for sustained job creation. Countries can then use these targets to consider appropriate policies and roles of public and private sector. Our work suggests the following important steps: (i) data analysis; (ii) policy analysis; (iii) policy implementation. These steps could yield important insights, e.g. on how much transformation is really taking place, what are the major constraints and policies for transformation, and how can such policies best be implemented. Thus a productivity target could be a first step in stimulating the right policy and institutional responses, domestic as well as international including development finance institutions.

Read more over at Business Fights Poverty's SDG Zone.