Paper 3: High-quality Multi-stakeholder Partnerships for Implementing the SDGs

By Dr Minu Hemmati and Felix Dodds On the margins of the recent HLPF 2016 in New York, Global Research Institute (University of North Carolina) and CatalySD held a reflection workshop on “Multi-stakeholder partnerships for imple-menting the 2030 Agenda”. 
The main purpose of the workshop was to discuss how to best foster high-quality multi-stakeholder partnerships for implementing the 2030 Agenda.
Colleagues from the UN, governments, NGOs and other stakeholders, multi-stakeholder partnership initiatives, and experts came together to discuss the UN’s engagement with partnerships and their contributions to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Participants shared experiences and views, and discussed what would need to be addressed in the future. 

Paper 2: The Time Has Come - Sustainable Development Private Finance to Support the 2030 Agenda

By Steve Waygood and Stephanie Maier, AVIVA Investors and Felix Dodds, Associate Fellow at the Tellus Institute.

Business and finance in particular, has a critical role in ensuring that the Goals are met. The SDGs have great aspirations for the roughly $150 billion worth of official development assistance (ODA). However, there is insufficient focus on encouraging investors to redeploy the $300 trillion of capital in the global markets in a way that will help achieve these Goals.

Investors can be a catalyst for the innovation in sustainable technologies and entrepreneurialism required to meet the growing demand for goods and services from an ever—growing global population.

Following on this call, this paper outlines the focus in the UN system on, in particular, Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) reporting by companies, the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) and the UNEP Inquiry recommendations.

Financing for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Climate Agreement: The UN Ecosystem of Initiatives on Private Sector Finance

SDG 2030 Series Report No. 2 – ‘Financing for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Climate Agreement: The UN Ecosystem of Initiatives on Private Sector Finance’

On July 13, 2021, on the virtual sidelines of the 2021 United Nations High-level Forum on Sustainable Development in New York – the HLPF, Stakeholder Forum and New World Frontiers held an HLPF ‘Pop-up’ Side Event to launch a new paper:

Financing for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Climate Agreement: The UN Ecosystem of Initiatives on Private Sector Finance

About the paper:

This timely paper is an overview of the UN Ecosystem of Initiatives on the private sector finance role in helping to finance the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Climate Agreement. The delivery of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development has been estimated by several organizations, from the World Bank to the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, to be in the region of US$3-$5 trillion annually. This dwarfs the contribution from Overseas Development aid, which is in the region of US$150 billion annually.

The financing for the SDGs and the Paris Agreement will need a refocusing of private sector finance. In that context, this paper explores the state of the UN ecosystem of initiatives on private sector finance in support of this.

The realignment of private sector finance to support sustainable development and to stop funding activities that take us in the wrong direction has accelerated since the 2012 Rio+20 conference, the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (2015), the Addis Ababa Action Agenda on Financing for Development, and the Paris Agreement.

2021 has seen action on fossil fuel company boards where, recently, three directors committing to move them towards renewables (EXXON-Mobile) have been elected. And a Netherlands court ruled that the Royal Dutch Shell company needs to slash its greenhouse gas emissions. Moody’s estimated in 2019 that the total green bond market was heading to $250 billion with the COVID recovery packages being built around green technology; this is going to increase substantively in the coming years.

A RECORDING OF THAT SIDE EVENT CAN BE FOUND HERE.  THE PRESENTATIONS, A SINGLE PDF

Paper 1: Transforming Our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

By Felix Dodds

This is the first New World Frontiers paper. It focuses on how the SDGs became part of a transformation agenda and the problems that will continue to have an impact as we move towards implementation. It ends looking at the challenges for stakeholders themselves.