The 2023 SDG Business Blueprint: How to take action on the Global Goals

20th September 2023

This new report, developed in partnership with Lloyds Bank, explores how businesses can better align themselves with the Sustainable Development Goals to drive transformative change.

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.

Fill out the form on the side of this window to access your version of edie’s 2023 SDG Business Blueprint.