In the summit in New York, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon rallied corporate leaders and entrepreneurs, gathered to focus on key areas required to reach a new era of sustainability, including responsible practices, transformative partnerships, breakthrough innovation and targeted investment.
In the 2016 UN Global Compact Leaders Summit, Mr. Ban emphasized that achieving the aims of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development would require finding new ways of living that would end the suffering, discrimination and lack of opportunity for billions of people around the world.
The Leaders Summit aims to jump-start business action everywhere on the Goals. For this, the Global Compact unveiled a multi-year strategy to drive business awareness and activity that supports the achievement of the Goals by 2030.
The new ‘Making Global Goals Local Business’ strategy include an annual Leaders Summit, the SDG Pioneers programme, Local Network SDG Action Plans, UN-business partnerships, and impact reporting.
Reflecting on the adoption of last year of both the SDGs and the Paris Agreement on climate change, Mr. Ban said that sustainable development could be separated from fighting the impacts of climate change, and called for a holistic development model will take climate impact and fragile ecosystems into account, and would benefit both people and the planet.
He added that, the Paris Agreement and the SDGs give the private sector an unprecedented opportunity to create clean-energy, climate-resilient, sustainable economies.
“We are at a decisive moment in the shift to sustainable and inclusive markets,” continued Mr. Ban, noting that the first step in this regard would be to mobilize the global business community as never before. “All businesses, everywhere, can and should play a role in improving our world. That starts with integrity – doing business right,” he said.
