Kathy Gibson reports – The private sector is making progress on attaining the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), but there are still some significant challenges to overcome.
Overall, South Africa has achieved just 17% of its goals, so there is still a tremendously long way to go towards the 2030 deadline.
“We need to go forward faster,” says Dr Achieng Ojwang, executive director of the Global Compact Network South Africa (GCNSA).
The 2024 Voluntary National Review on the SDGs recommends some drivers that would help get the country back on track: finance and investment (SDG 12); living wage (SDG 8); gender equality (SDG 5); climate action (SDG 13); and water resilience (SDG 6).
Dr Ojwang was presenting the 2024 Voluntary National Review on the Sustainable Development Goals which examines private sector contributions to achieving the goals.
She points out that there is a rise in private sector awareness and policy relating to climate action, partnering for the goals, and zero hunger.
The biggest losses were innovation, education, and responsible consumption and production – all of which dropped out of the top five priorities.
Priorities differ according to different industry sectors, based on where they can make the most impact.
There are a number of risks involved in achieving the SDGs, with companies itemising them as follows:
* Enabling innovation for sustainability.
* Workforce development and labour dynamics.
* Sustainable supply chain and source of supply.
* Social responsibility and enabling inclusion.
* Increasing project implementation cost and complexity.
* Market competition and economic stability.
* Policy, regulatory compliance and business integrity.
* Environmental impact and resource management.
* Energy management and cost efficiency.
* Security and safety for staff and customers.
According to the report, priority topics affecting the South African private sector are:
* SDG 17 – Partnership For The Goals: All the priority topics reviewed presented complex challenges that require partnerships for success. Topics such as effective public-private sector collaboration and synergies with civil society and communities rely on partnerships and multi- stakeholder engagement to enable success.
* SDG 8 – Decent Work and Economic Growth Priority topics like addressing the post-pandemic landscape, empowering women for gender equality, and enabling a just energy transition speak to the need for sustained economic resilience, as well as equitable and inclusive work opportunities.
* SDG 9 – Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure Priority topics like growing sustainable investment, ethical transformation governance, and building global supply chain resilience feed into this goal, focusing on enhancing technological capabilities and fostering innovation.
* SDG 13 – Climate Action: Climate action is prioritised in response to the private sector’s commitment to a just transition to carbon neutrality and solving the energy crisis.
The top six opportunity SDGs were identified as:
* SDG 9 – Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure: Business opportunities delivering emergent technologies and supporting innovation.
* SDG 12 – Responsible Consumption and Productivity: Value propositions that enable better use of resources and sustainable practices.
* SDG 16 – Peace, Justice and Strong: This goal enables data protection, performance reporting, and cybersecurity offerings.
* SDG 7 – Affordable and Clean Energy Products and services enable a just transition to affordable, renewable, clean energy – including independent power production.
* SDG 8 – Decent Work and Economic Growth Investment, finance, and advisory services to enable decent work and economic growth.
* SDG 11 – Sustainable Cities and Communities: This goal contributes to the development of sustainable cities and communities including products, services, and infrastructure.
The report finds that companies acknowledge where they need to improve, but also note that policy compliance remains too difficult, too resource compliant, and too punitive.
They offered recommendations to make SDGs simpler to adopt: creating an online portal as a one-stop shop; making compliance consistent; check that it’s working; and place more focus on incentives.