edie launches new report on how businesses can take action on the SDGs

The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – which define our global priorities and aspirations for 2030 – represent a crucial opportunity to end extreme poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and protect our planet. Achieving the Goals requires an unprecedented effort across all aspects of society – and business sits at the heart of it.

But with less than seven years left to deliver on the ambition of the SDGs, it’s clear that business must step up if we’re to have a positive impact on society which the Goals ultimately exist to drive.

How can we bridge the gap between ambition and action? What can sustainability and energy professionals do to drive engagement with the SDGs and ensure the framework is leading to tangible actions within this decade? Delivered as part of edie’s SDG Week, the SDG Business Blueprint report explores whether businesses are prioritising, or de-prioritising, the SDGs as part of their corporate sustainability strategies.

The report features timely examples of how corporates can embed and to embrace the Global Goals, not just in their reporting, but through tangible projects, solutions and services. The report also features the results of an in-depth edie survey of more than 100 in-house sustainability and ESG professionals and therefore provides a timely temperature check as to whether organisations are still prioritising the SDGs in the face of the cost-of-living crisis – which itself is intrinsically linked to the Global Goals.

It features a foreword from Steve Kenzie, Executive Director, UN Global Compact Network, calling on nations and corporates to re-evaluate their relationships with the Goals in order to catalyse action. Additionally, Chinyelu (Chi) Oranefo, Director, Sustainability & ESG Finance Lloyds Bank, Corporate and Institutional Banking (who partnered with edie in producing this report) provides an insightful viewpoint on how the SDGs align with ongoing efforts to deliver a Just Transition.

Click here to access the report.

The report also features exclusive results of an in-depth survey of the edie audience.

To gauge an understanding of how tuned-in to the SDGs sustainability professionals are, edie ran a survey earlier in the year in order to gain insight into how corporates were approaching the Global Goals and whether they could be delivered as part of a Just Transition.

The survey ran for one month in August 2023 and garnered responses from 100 corporate representatives. Respondents worked for a range of different-sized organisations across all sectors of the UK economy.

Click here to access the report.