Category: Global Goals

Joint Civil Society – Business Advocacy Is Emerging as a Powerful Tool to Drive Policy Change in Support of the SDGs

Nearly three years after formally adopting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), it is increasingly clear that governments face significant challenges that could undermine progress.  These include fiscal constraints, lack of political will, institutional failures and state fragility. Moreover, governments are always under pressure to deliver short-term results, but many of the complex systemic challenges being […]

Entrepreneurs Are Changing The World

Entrepreneurship has proven to have a positive impact on today’s global challenges. Each one of us, by developing and using our strengths and skills, are agents of social change.  As stated by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, over 43% of the global population pictures themselves starting a business in the next six months. Entrepreneurship is becoming […]

Missed our Skoll World Forum 2018 Ecosystem Event on Corporate Social Innovation?

Corporate social intrapreneurs develop profitable new products, services, or business models that create value for society and their company. ​​But being a social intrapreneur is not easy. The “corporate immune system” tends to fight different or unfamiliar ideas and it can be hard to make a convincing investment case. Despite the challenges, social innovation is […]

Why Retailers are Uniting to Tackle Climate Change

The products we can buy today may not be available to us in the future unless action is taken to address the most pressing global challenges facing us. Take a simple cotton shirt for example. Cotton production is being hit by environmental impacts such as climate change and water scarcity, social challenges in production such […]

Collaboration: How Business Must Lead to Achieve Sustainable Development

How does business lead? When we think of leadership, we often think of a single, iconic leader. We celebrate leading companies for their bold actions on sustainability risks and opportunities; yet one of the most important ways business leads is through collaboration. In the past year, it has become increasingly clear that the world is […]

Making the Most of Interesting Times – and Achieving the Global Goals

As Robert Kennedy remarked in 1966, “Like it or not, we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and uncertainty; but they are also the most creative of any time in the history of mankind.” For many of us, the first months of 2018 will go down in history as a similarly interesting […]

Supporting the SDGs through the Power of Data

To wrap up 2017, GSMA, the UN Foundation and the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data (the Global Partnership) met in New York with UN agencies and country missions to discuss the actual and potential contribution of partnerships and data to a better world. GSMA shared concrete examples of how an industry sector is using […]

SDGs: What Part Do Forests Play?

Deemed as the ‘lungs of the planet’ and covering 30% of the earth’s surface, forests are essential to supporting all life on Earth. Not only do forests provide a wide array of ecosystem services, such as absorbing greenhouse gases and regulating water quality, there are also over a billion people who depend on forests for […]

Access to Energy Through Mobile Is Changing Lives

Over the last decade, the rapid growth of the mobile industry in developing countries has surprised observers. Access to mobile has increasingly outpaced access to basic services such as energy, water and sanitation. In fact, due to the slow expansion of the traditional energy grid, 1.2 billion people around the world still live without access […]

Delivering on the Promise of Inclusive Business

Back in November 2008, on a hot, dusty day in Dar es Salaam, I vividly remember the moment I met Lillian Kessy. I was immediately struck by her confidence, dignity and determination. Only a year earlier, Lillian was in a desperate financial situation. By the time I met her, she was busy building a small […]

Inviting Start-ups (and Up-starts) to Solve Global Problems

The saying goes that two heads are better than one. We believe it gets even better when you bring a lot of different talent together to collaborate and solve urgent global challenges. HelloScience, supported by Novozymes, is an online open innovation network for entrepreneurs, researchers, NGOs, associations and companies. It aims to foster collaboration across […]

2 Billion People Can’t See Clearly. This Business Sees the Answer.

What if I told you we had a breakthrough solution that could access untapped potential in 2.5 billion people? That it could keep people safer and help children learn better? You might envision a fancy new technology, but this magic bullet is surprisingly simple: a pair of eyeglasses. Just this month, Williams-Sonoma Inc. and Target […]

Want to Change the World? Allow the Private Sector to Do What it Does Best

For the past week, the world has watched as heads of state and global business leaders convened in New York City for the 72nd United Nations General Assembly. The agenda was far from light. Topics ranged from food security to climate change to the refugee crisis to healthcare. The task at hand – achieving the […]

Business Fights Poverty NYC 2017: Watch the Event Videos

Last week, 150 people came together in New York, at an event timed to coincide with the UN General Assembly, to explore the theme, “Rethinking Collaboration for the SDGs”. The event was co-hosted with Barclays and the Harvard Kennedy School Corporate Responsibility Initiative, and with the support of CDC Group, the UK’s Development Finance Institution. […]

From Digital Divide to Inclusion: How to Make Digital Finance Work for India’s Women

Often heralded as a panacea for financial inclusion, digital financial services could exacerbate the gender divide, unless there is a concerted effort to develop women-friendly products and channels. Despite recent successes in India’s financial inclusion journey, Indian women still cannot access bank accounts, loans, and other financial services as easily as men. In 2015, only […]

Partnering to Get Every Child Learning

The world is witnessing the highest levels of human displacement on record since World War II. Of the unprecedented 65.3 million people forced from their homes, almost one-third are refugees, seeking protection from violence or persecution. The majority of refugee children have lost not only their home, but also their education – so often the […]

Bold Partnerships Can Help Achieve the Global Goals

While trust in business and institutions is consistently questioned, I believe partnerships are providing solutions. The Global Goals are clear that business has a vital role to play in achieving sustainable development. The private sector can bring the scale, expertise, and resources needed to find new solutions. But to have impact we must work in […]

The Money is There to Fight Climate Change

  Policy debates on climate change and sustainable development routinely cite the massive numbers needed to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): an additional $1 trillion annually in clean energy investments to limit global warming to below 2 degrees and between $5-7 trillion a year to achieve the SDGs. These numbers are overwhelming […]