We Support SDG Goals
The UN narrative on the theme of ‘Financing for Development’ (FFD in short) lays in multi stakeholder partnerships rooted in UN Principles of neutral engagement, human rights respect, transparency and accountability, diverse funding mechanisms leverage, integrated and coherent policy action in tackling sustainable development challenges and holistic capacity building of people and institutions.
On the other hand, the typical private sector narrative on the topic involves firms to look at new ways of sharing risks or combining resources be they expertise, money, talent, or more to capture waves of opportunities in social good to achieve economic growth and prosperity for societies simultaneously through the ‘Sustainable Development Goals’ agenda. This narrative is rooted in the notion of ‘shared value’ and its principal poles in re conceiving products and markets, re-defining productivity in value chains and enabling local clusters of development taking on board the needs & purchasing powers of various types of customers and stakeholders.
The global civil society views, on the theme, however, are tempered with caution and need for circumspection on the growing role of UN-Business partnerships and the strong need for tools and rules for engagement, transparency and accountability on finance flows, an overhaul of the global tax, trade and direct investment regimes and the efficacy and efficiencies of PPP (Public Private Partnerships) in addressing global public and social goods challenges.
Against this backdrop and therefore given that the means of financing the massive sustainable development agenda describes the interdependent mix of financial resources, technology development and transfer, capacity‐building, inclusive and equitable globalization and trade, regional integration, as well as the creation of a enabling environments required to implement the new sustainable development agenda, particularly in developing countries, private sector has a very strong role to play across the ‘ means’ spectrum and the SDG goals coverage 1 through 17.
This first of its kind innovative evidence based advocacy initiative titled ‘FFD – 6PfPSA ( Financing for Development – 6 Pillars for Private Sector Action’) draws on the outlined contextual evidence base to tease out the pillars while striking a balance across the broad stakeholder groups on the theme (in the UN, private sector, academia and global civil society) and presents them in the form of compact yet insightful ‘platform-action type- SDG impact info graphics‘ for wide stakeholder uptake especially the private sector.
Pillar 1 ( CATALYZE SMALL BUSINESS INVESTMENTS ) addresses how private sector might be able to re imagine inclusive products, services, solutions, markets and value chains and create the right investment channels for value chain partners and/or small businesses including women owned. Pillar 2 ( ENHANCE VOLUNTARY COMMITMENTS) addresses the potential to scale up some of the current crop of successful global business initiatives in the social good space.Pillar 3 (PIONEER/SCALE UP SUSTAINABLE INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENTS) seeks to leverage what private sector has traditionally excelled at and bringing in that efficiency and scale thinking to the social good opportunity landscape.
Pillar 4 (SUPPORT CATALYTIC AID INVESTMENTS) aims to address the notions of private sector pooling resources and expertise, sharing risks and catalyzing highly risky and long time drawn transformative development , social good initiatives in frontier markets.
Pillar 5 (FOSTER FINANCIAL FLOWS TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY) is drawn up to address the legitimate and growing concern of global civil society in the private sector led financial flows by exhorting to leverage, support and /or use ‘OPEN DATA’ platforms.
And finally and Pillar 6(ADVOCATE REFORMS AND SUPPORT CAPACITY BUILDING AND TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER MECHANISMS) addresses the strong need for supportive private sector involvement in conjunction with various relevant UN Bodies for tax, investment regime reforms and help the emerging and developing world to get onto sustainable development pathways through enabling Capacity and Technology Transfer mechanisms support.
The expected outcome of this innovative evidence based initiative is to help catalyze global private sector action in the suggested pillar directions and for the Indian private sector, to present a fresh and new frame to direct the mandated 2% CSR spends in innovative and fruitful development avenues and contribute their might to make in and take off India on truly sustainable pathways.
