Some interesting research published recently, by Impact Cubed in partnership with Oxford Risk, revealed gaps between investor demand for sustainable investment solutions and the representation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in investment products. Our years of research into business contributions to the SDGs has given us some insights into why this underrepresentation might be occurring.
One of the principal barriers to aligning business activities with the SDGs is the fact that they were not conceived primarily as business goals. There are a handful of targets which address the contributions businesses can make, but the Goals were designed to provide a framework to guide UN member states towards a more sustainable future, and the bulk of the targets which underpin them are aimed at governments and institutions.
It is easy to see why linking positive activities to colourful symbols might be attractive from a marketing perspective, but their use by some companies for this purpose has led, in some cases, to an over simplistic association between the Goals and business activities. So, while their use as a marketing tool might be appropriate at some level, when it comes to the complex matter of investors' expectations of what responsible corporate activity should look like, a sustainability-by-soundbite approach is bound to lead to a gap between what the Goal headings appear to offer and what they are actually targeting.
The title of a Goal may conjure particular impressions of the objectives and actions it should be aiming at, but failure to analyse the official targets that underpin them can, unsurprisingly, lead to false assumptions. When an investor demands alignment with Goal 13 - Climate Action, they may be imagining companies reducing their reliance on fossil fuels, setting ambitious Net Zero targets, or manufacturing wind turbines or solar panels; but none of the underlying targets is specifically focused on such activities. The targets underpinning Goal 13 actually read as follows:
Goal 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts
- 13.1 - Strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters in all countries.
- 13.2 - Integrate climate change measures into national policies, strategies and planning.
- 13.3 - Improve education, awareness-raising and human and institutional capacity on climate change mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction and early warning.
- 13.a - Implement the commitment undertaken by developed-country parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to a goal of mobilizing jointly $100 billion annually by 2020 from all sources to address the needs of developing countries in the context of meaningful mitigation actions and transparency on implementation and fully operationalize the Green Climate Fund through its capitalization as soon as possible.
- 13.b - Promote mechanisms for raising capacity for effective climate change-related planning and management in least developed countries and small island developing States, including focusing on women, youth and local and marginalized communities.
Practical action that companies can take to contribute to combatting climate change are found under other goals, for example, renewable energy and energy efficiency (Goal 7), sustainable cities (Goal 11), and innovating to make existing industrial processes more sustainable (Goal 9).
If investors expect something implied either by a superficial reading of the Goal heading, or by mis-reporting of what the Goal means, it is hardly the fault of a fund for not meeting false expectations. Heightened awareness and regulation of greenwashing makes funds and the individual companies in which they invest much more wary of making claims they can't substantiate. Maybe the underrepresentation of certain Goals within funds with sustainability ambitions is something to be celebrated as a mature and honest reading of the ability of companies to contribute to the UN SDGs, and a victory in the fight against greenwash?
One way to address the misalignment between investor demand and solutions is to have a set of alternative business-focussed sustainability goals. However, it will not be simple to get broad agreement over what these goals and their underlying targets should be. The advantage of a UN-led approach is that the results represent a global consensus. The Inter-Agency and Expert Group on Sustainable Development Goal Indicators is conducting a comprehensive review of the framework this year for presentation to the UN next year, but it is not clear whether this will lead to better targets for business.
Contact us to find out more about our in-depth approach, which links corporate activities to the underlying targets of the UN SDGs.