SDG-related initiatives

Business Reporting On The SDGs

Global Reporting Initiative

GRI and the United Nations Global Compact have established a collaborative initiative, Business Reporting on the SDGs, as an Action Platform to accelerate corporate reporting on the Global Goals. As a concrete output, the Business Reporting on the SDGs will offer a mechanism for reporting on the SDGs within GRI Standards and UN Global Compact Communication on Progress. The Action Platform work will also issue recommendations for aligning the two reporting frameworks.

Expected outcomes:

List of business disclosures across the SDGs
Publication on best practice SDG reporting
Further integration of SDGs into existing frameworks
SDG data aggregation

International Finance Corporation

IFC uses DOTS to track the development impact of all its investments and advisory work. IFC investments are given an overall DOTS score based on their rating against a number of quantitative and qualitative indicators identified in four performance categories: financial performance, economic performance, environmental and social performance, and private sector development. A synthesis rating is given to the overall development outcome.

United Nations Global Compact

Aim: Explore innovative financial instruments with the potential to direct private finance towards critical sustainability solutions.

Platform Activities

Mapping of financial innovation: gain strategic insights from a comprehensive mapping and database of financial innovations and potential investment size for the SDGs.
Benchmarking and analytics: access third-party market and financial research on the blended returns of SDG investments and review scorecards of companies’ and investments’ SDG contributions.
Innovation lab: take part in a pilot programme to launch innovative solutions for SDG investments.

Global Social Impact Investment Steering Group

The GSG is an independent global steering group catalysing impact investment and entrepreneurship to benefit people and the planet. The GSG was established in August 2015 as the successor to and incorporating the work of the Social Impact Investment Taskforce established under the UK’s presidency of the G8. The GSG currently has 15 member countries plus the EU, as well as active observers from leading network organisations. Chaired by Sir Ronald Cohen, the GSG brings together leaders from the worlds of finance, business and philanthropy.

Harmonized Indicators For Private Sector Operations (HIPSO)

The Harmonized Indicators for Private Sector Operations are the result of an effort to standardise the criteria that international finance institutions use to assess the impact of their work with private sector clients. These criteria are measured via a system of indicators, and collected via reports that most International Finance Institutions (IFIs) require of their clients. In 2013, 25 IFIs signed a memorandum to ease the reporting burden on shared private sector clients and facilitate learning from each other. Together, the organisations created a harmonised set of 27 core indicators for 12 different sectors.

Investment Leaders Group, University of Cambridge

In search of impact: Measuring the full value of capital aims to help the investment industry empower savers to understand the impact of their investments on the critical challenges of our generation and to invest in line with their world views.

This report provides a framework that enables investors to calculate and communicate the social and environmental impacts of their portfolios using a simplified set of six environmental and social themes relevant to investors.

It takes as its starting point the recently-adopted SDGs and converts them through a careful process of clustering, prioritisation and simplification into a set of six impact metrics for investors.

Impact Management Project

The Impact Management Project is the voice of over 700 practitioners from across geographies and disciplines.

Hundreds of people and organisations from different contexts and countries have now come together to agree on shared fundamentals for understanding and communicating our impact goals and performance. This convergence does not mean that we all use the same resources, frameworks or tools. We want to use resources, whether proprietary or off-the-shelf, that suit our own context. Some people want detailed information frequently; others want less detailed information, less frequently. But it does require us to be able to look at whatever information we share with each other about impact and observe the same fundamentals.

GIIN

IRIS is a catalogue of generally accepted performance metrics that leading impact investors use to: measure social, environmental and financial success, evaluate deals and grow the sector’s credibility. IRIS is managed by the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN), a non-profit organisation dedicated to increasing the scale and effectiveness of impact investing. The GIIN offers IRIS to support transparency, credibility and accountability in impact measurement practices across the impact investing industry.

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD)

The Framework is based on a four-step methodology that attempts to merge the business perspectives of its contribution to development with the societal perspectives of what is important where that business operates. It is rooted in a business approach and begins with measuring what business does through its business activities.

The business activities are grouped into four clusters:

Governance and sustainability (corporate governance and environmental management)
Assets (infrastructure and products and services)
People (jobs and skills and training)
Financial flows (procurement and taxes)

Natural Capital Coalition, Natural Capital Finance Alliance, UN Environment Programme - Finance Initiative, Global Canopy Programme, VBDO

Developing guidance to help financial institutions incorporate the consideration of natural capital impacts and dependencies into their lending, investment and insurance practices and processes.

GRI, UN Global Compact, and WBCSD

This inventory maps existing business indicators against the SDGs. It allows you to explore commonly used indicators and other relevant indicators that may be useful when measuring and reporting your organisation’s contribution to the SDGs.

Dutch Association of Investors for Sustainable Development

This Dutch SDG Investing (SDGI) agenda serves to reinforce the commitment of 18 Dutch financial institutions and to offer concrete recommendations for “SDGI action” in context of Dutch investment value chains.

Four action areas include:

Catalyse significant SDG investment through the systematic deployment of blended finance instruments
Make SDG investment the new normal by encouraging and enabling all Dutch retail investors to invest with impact
Establish an enabling SDGI data environment by stimulating the uptake of sustainability indicators and standards
Identify and address actual and perceived regulatory barriers and incentives to SDG investment

Social Impact Investment Initiative

The subsequent phase of OECD social impact investment work will continue to focus on building the evidence base. The findings from the four work streams will be pulled together into a second report to be released mid-2018.

The four social impact investment work streams include:

data – developing standards to collect internationally comparable data;
case studies – looking at various instruments and their applicability in a variety of sectors and country settings;
knowledge sharing – through workshops focused on different players, regions and sectors;
policy – mapping policies in most active countries and determining those most effective and how they can apply to other markets.

Sustainable Development Investment Partnership (SDIP)

The Sustainable Development Investment Partnership (SDIP) is a collaborative initiative coordinated by the World Economic Forum with support from the OECD, comprised of public, private and philanthropic institutions from around the world.

Together, SDIP members are committed to mobilising blended finance for $100 billion of projects supporting sustainable and climate-resilient infrastructure.

Swedish Leadership For Sustainable Development

Swedish Leadership for Sustainable Development is a network of 20+ companies, selected expert organisations and a Development Finance Institution. The network is coordinated by Sida and has become a forum for valuable knowledge-exchange, concrete projects and collaborative models for poverty reduction and sustainable development, with implementation of the SDGs as the overarching umbrella.

United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative

In October 2015, a group of banks and investors released the Positive Impact Manifesto, which calls for a new financing paradigm. The Manifesto outlines a Positive Impact Roadmap towards the achievement of SDG financing, focused on two core needs.

Principles for Positive Impact Finance: a common framework to help the finance community and a broader set of public and private stakeholders identify, assess and promote positive impact activities, entities and projects.
A collaborative, solution-building approach to developing and implementing new business models and financing approaches that will help address the SDG funding gap and realise the SDGs themselves.

International Integrated Reporting Council and ICAS

A framework for embedding sustainable development issues in an organisation’s decision making, strategies and business model by: considering risks and opportunities presented by the external environment; and acknowledging that creating value over time requires the organisation to acknowledge and address the risks and opportunities associated with social and environmental stewardship.

This framework is aligned with the multi-capital International <IR> Framework issued by the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC, 2013). Through its emphasis on connectivity and Board oversight, it facilitates high-level engagement and a holistic approach (integrated thinking).

Aviva, the UN Foundation, BSDC, and Index Initiative

The World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA) aims to develop, fund, house and safeguard free, publicly available corporate sustainability benchmarks aligned with the SDGs.

The WBA plans to use corporate benchmarks to measure and compare performance of companies on the SDGs. This idea is based on a recommendation outlined in the BSDC’s flagship report about the need for such benchmarks to provide stakeholders with information they can use to inform investment and other economic decisions, increase transparency and facilitate trust between sectors, and help track and compare corporate sustainability performance.