Partnerships and financing. Issue 16

➤ have profound impacts on areas including:

gender equality, human rights, climate change, agriculture and food, water and corruption. The private sector has been traditionally the driver of technology development and innovation, representing a hub for technical progress. It has, moreover, proven to have considerable ability to combine inventive capacity with access to finance.

But businesses are already engaging in development in a variety of ways – from initiatives seeking to identify new models of incorporating responsible behaviour in core activities, to more traditional initiatives striving to leverage business supply chains and the production process. One particular area where the private sector has played a critical role is in creating innovative solutions to climate change and energy security, which often demand fine coupling between capital and ground-breaking capability. Creating and engaging in platforms for dialogue and knowledge sharing with the private sector can unlock the potential of relevant actors, directly impacting the effectiveness of partnerships.

The Green Industry Platform’s work to ensure more sustainable business practices in manufacturing refers to these initiatives, driven largely by large and small companies adjusting their business model to deal with today’s complex and resource-constrained world. This global multi-stakeholder partnership, launched by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), creates a platform for businesses, governments, international and civil society organizations to work together, with a view to globally minimizing the negative environmental impacts of today’s businesses, through scaling up and mainstreaming greening practices throughout the global manufacturing and industry process.

In fact, businesses that integrate sustainability into their business models are increasingly reaping greater opportunities for new markets, innovation, resource efficiency and risk management, while also adding long-term value in economic, social and environmental terms. As they are constantly encountering further opportunities associated with development, businesses are progressively more aware of the need to adapt to the changing global development agenda, and thus recognize the value of

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partnerships and self-engagement in this context.

Moreover, a number of partnerships focus on helping to shape public policy as well as public attitudes for improved corporate performance.

Respective policy advocacy in climate and energy, as put into practice by the Caring for Climate (C4C) initiative, is another example of leveraging the private sector’s capacity for innovation to target pressing global challenges. Launched by the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in 2007 and jointly convened by the United Nations Global Compact, the secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and UNEP, C4C offers engagement opportunities to help prevent a climate change crisis by mobilizing a critical mass of business leaders to recommend and implement climate change solutions and policies. The initiative helps companies to advance practical solutions, share experiences, inform public policy, shape public attitudes and engage in public-private

Photo: istock

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“Transformative development solutions through business exist with the capabilities to have profound impacts on areas including: gender equality, human rights, climate change, agriculture and food, water and corruption.” partnerships. More than 350 companies from 50 countries, which support the world’s largest business initiative on climate change, are prepared to set goals and publicly disclose emissions as part of their existing disclosure commitment within the UN Global Compact framework.

Multiple factors explain the accumulated interest in supporting convergence between business incentives with public policy objectives, and more specifically, in its explicit integration with achieving future sustainable development goals. Despite the fact that we all talk about a globalized world, the private sector is actually a valuable point of contact for reaching local people and meeting local needs. On the one hand, business-reorienting practices around systemic development issues can create positive economic, environmental and social spillovers by promoting local development, inter alia, ➤