An A-Z of Sustainability: U is for United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

Oct 23, 20245 min read

“The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development , adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future. At its heart are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are an urgent call for action by all countries - developed and developing - in a global partnership. They recognize that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth – all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests.” So says the UN website, setting out the background to the SDGs or what are sometimes known simply as The Global Goals.

In this article I’ll explore a little bit more what the goals are about, how we are currently doing, and critically for our A-Z series, why company sustainability directors should care.

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

The UN outlined 17 goals which all have multiple targets, (169 in total), so is a pretty comprehensive agenda.

Each goal has a title and a simple logo:

What is worth being aware of is that the logos only use a short form title and sometimes this can be misleading. For instance, Goal 2, “Zero hunger” is actually “End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture”, so includes a number of areas that would not perhaps be brought to mind by just the short title. This can be particularly important when used within a corporate context, but more of that later.

As with all things in sustainability, the Goals are of course interlinked, but the structure provides focus in different areas with those specific targets under each. For instance, Goal 13 Climate Action targets are around resilience, policy, finance, and education whilst specific energy related activity is under Goal 7. It should also be clear that this is both a social and environmental agenda too.

Goal 17 is also worth a specific mention as it is a little different to the others. Goal 17 is about partnerships and the need to work together in order to deliver the other goals.

Progress against the SDGs

Ultimately, the SDGs provide a very laudable set of ambitions and one that governments around the world have signed up to. So how are we doing at just over halfway to the 2030 deadline?

Well not very well at all, actually. In the first few years, there was slow but sustained progress across many of the targets. But in the last five years progress has been very limited against the backdrop of COVID, unrest in many parts of the world, the effects of climate change, and a poor economic situation.

Each year the UN produces a progress update; the latest saying “The 2024 progress assessment reveals the world is severely off-track to achieve the 2030 Agenda”. Indeed “only seventeen per cent of SDGs targets are on track to be achieved, nearly half are showing minimal or moderate progress, and progress on over a third has stalled or even regressed.” The report says success will only be possible with peace, greater finance to ensure equitable outcomes for developing countries and doubling down on the transformation required in areas such as energy and food. As well as the overall report you can also access ratings of each country (the UK is ranked 9th) with progress against each individual target also tracked Sustainable Development Report 2024.

How corporates can use the SDGs

So why should you care about the SDGs? Well, they were always intended to be a universal structure that all stakeholders could use, not just governments. As such, they can be a very useful way to link what you are doing to something much bigger, showing how your company is playing its part in a global agenda and helping to engage employees in something beyond just their workplace.

If you are just starting out with your sustainability thinking it can be a good first step to engage a wide group of people across the organisation in workshops with the SDGs as a structure. Their structure can help boil down all those big issues in sustainability in an accessible way. You could start by explaining what each of the Goals cover (remember not just the short headings), maybe with a few facts and figures to illustrate where we are and what the targets are. You can then explore how they could be relevant to your business, where you could have positive or negative impacts. You can then refine this further to a short list of where you can really have meaningful impact and use this to focus your sustainability efforts. It’s worth saying that the aim isn’t ultimately to identify actions on each Goal, but to highlight those Goals which are the main focus areas for your business.

Many companies show these links in their annual reports and indeed ESG rating agencies will include assessments of linkages to SDGs in their assessments of companies. Some companies go a stage further and will even seek formal certification of alignment to SDGs. This should be more than just window dressing in an annual report though, the real benefit to your business is the focus it can bring and the alignment to an external structure to drive real purpose.

SDGs in marketing

A particular area where you may find it helpful to use the SDGs is with your marketing teams. Looking to shape your strategy and align your marketing with the world’s most important sustainability goals can provide useful insights. There are now tools that can help you do this such as the Sustainable Marketing Compass, but even without these, getting your marketing colleagues to think about the impacts their products and services have in this way can open up new areas of innovation or market positioning and also question some existing ones too. Goal 12, Responsible Consumption, in particular can spark some lively debates!

Although we may be hugely off target in achieving the goals it is hard to argue with their aims. As a sustainability director one of your challenges will be to give context to your sustainability plans amongst a myriad of priorities for the business. The SDGs provide a very useful way to do this, and the annual updates can give added emphasis to the need for continued action.

About the Author

Chris is a senior strategic leader with over 25 years’ commercial experience including sales, marketing, strategic planning and major business change initiatives at AkzoNobel and ICI. He has a wide knowledge of sustainability and how to integrate this into business having held senior sustainability roles at AkzoNobel for 12 years, including as Global Sustainability Director Decorative Paints and AkzoNobel Planet Possible Programme Manager. Chris is now an independent sustainability consultant and a pension trustee director.