This week in Davos, some 2,500 of the most influential leaders have come together to discuss global megatrends and their impact on business and society. Against the backdrop of last year’s agreements on the sustainable development goals and climate, it is not surprising that most of the discussions focus on how to now make this happen.
The Paris climate agreement set a firm path that will allow commitments to become reality, even with its shortcomings. For business leaders that means investment decisions will become easier to make.
The World Business Council for Sustainable Development has brought together more than 160 companies to develop low carbon action plans aimed at leading decarbonisation in a range of sectors. This Low Carbon Technology Partnership initiative was launched at COP20 in Lima, where a call was made for businesses and other non-state actors to come together and set out their contributions to fighting climate change.
A year on from Lima, the ambitions and action plans presented by LCTPi at COP21 show how seriously business has taken this call to action. An independent analysis of LCTPi carried out by PricewaterhouseCoppers demonstrates that if its ambitions were met, LCTPi has the potential to deliver 65 per cent of the emissions reductions necessary to stay under 2°C.
Progress on the climate change challenge offers great hope that other sustainable development goals can also be tackled through new models of public-private cooperation and the application of breakthrough science and technology solutions.
The sustainable development goals call for a hugely ambitious transition over the next 15 years, to a world in which poverty is eliminated, growth made inclusive and sustainable, and ecosystems are restored. Skeptics ask whether there’s any real prospect of delivering what has been agreed. They have half a point – the goals are incredibly ambitious. Achieving these hugely demanding goals will require financial, human, and technical resources far beyond those of governments and international organisations.
Since 2000, the world has seen extreme poverty more than halved. Business – which provides 60 per cent of GDP, 80 per cent of inward capital flows and 90 per cent of jobs in developing countries – has been central to this success story. But, it can play a far greater and more constructive role in realizing growth and development opportunities.
To help articulate and quantify the economic case for businesses to engage in achieving the sustainable development goals, the Global Commission on Business and Sustainable Development was launched yesterday in Davos. The commission will investigate how businesses, which join the effort to end extreme poverty and protect natural resources, can both realize significant long-term economic rewards and help to achieve the sustainable development goals by 2030. Created by the former United Nations deputy secretary general Mark Malloch-Brown and Unilever chief executive officer Paul Polman, the Global Commission on Business and Sustainable Development brings together international leaders from business, labour, financial institutions and civil society. It will work over the next year to articulate and quantify the significant economic rewards – through new markets, investment opportunities and innovations – if the world tackles challenges including poverty, inequality and environmental stress, as well as the risks to business performance and stability such as increased fragmentation, resource competition and fragility if the world fails to address these risks.
It is time to scale up. Neither business nor government can address the complex interrelated global challenges of today alone. We must work together – across sectors, across countries, across borders and boundaries – in order to make the progress that is so urgently needed.
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Carina Larsfälten is managing director of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development
This piece forms part of today’s guest-edit of the Progress site by Stephen Kinnock MP, covering the discussions at Davos on the economy, business and the World Economic Forum’s central theme this year of ‘The Fourth Industrial Revolution’. Follow the guest-edit today here
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