The Most Critical of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals
The Sustainable Development Goals, as set out by the United Nations are the blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all. They address the global challenges we face, including poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation and peace and justice. They teach us to the need to always be learning more and to take action.
Whilst there are 17 Goals, one goal however, Goal 17 - Partnerships for the Goals is the key to unlocking success in achieving these goals. The SDGs are all intrinsically connected and operate concurrently, rather than as individual goals with one specific end point for each. Understanding this cohesion means we must realise that collaboration is the only way we can achieve these goals by 2030. We have to disrupt, think differently and take new action in order to achieve systemic change. Ultimately, the Goals need to work with and for each other and to not only achieve but to optimise this, we need to start with Goal 17 - Partnerships for the Goals, in mind.
When we think about some of the world’s biggest brands today and their successes, most have been built on great partnerships. The two Steve’s who created Apple, Larry and Sergey who have built the largest search engine in the world, Google, Bill and Paul who gave us Microsoft and of course the much-loved Ben and Jerry. The common thread between all of these successful partnerships is a common purpose, a deep-seeded belief in achieving success in their various fields, and respect for one another. Bill Gates has famously been quoted time and time again, saying “Our success has really been based on partnerships right from the beginning”. Now, post Microsoft, it is new partnerships through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that are affecting essential change in areas such as Polio, water access and educating girls amongst some of the world’s other most pressing issues.
While we need to make decisions first as individuals and then in business to start the waves of change, it is partnerships that can create the tsunami and ultimately achieve success. The world’s biggest problems cannot be solved by working in silos. We created Barefoot Citizens and its consulting arm Barefoot Consulting, as we believe that Purpose Drives People, People Create Communities, Communities Create Change. We are focused on building a framework for businesses to work with their internal customers, external customers, key stakeholders and their supply chain to drive positive global change.
SDG 17 creates the opportunity for institutional investors to engage with the new Impact Economy, using the Sustainable Development Goals to drive financial returns through creating social and environmental value; a trend which is gathering enormous momentum around the globe today. Achieving the SDGs does not need to come at the cost of profit, but it needs to constitute part of the conversations every business leader has when they look at the role they play in the world today and their contribution to it.
When thinking about working together, perhaps the most famous of quotes comes from Henry Ford, "Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress and working together is success”. Now is the time to open conversations with SDG 17 at the front of mind, to think differently, and to take new leaps to building a successful framework, driving not only profits but positive change for everyone living on the planet today and most importantly, for generations to come.
Get in contact to book a keynote, talk about how you can put purpose at the core of your corporate strategy or to start a conversation about partnerships for the goals.