The importance of the SDGs in the TMT Sector

The United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), encapsulated within the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, identify some of the biggest challenges facing our planet today, and call for action to address them. The 17 goals, and their 169 sub-targets, focus on a range of issues that are relevant and persistent throughout the world, such as reducing inequality, tackling pollution and ensuring economic prosperity for all. Achieving these goals requires the input of all governments, individuals and organisations within global society, including businesses.

In order to contribute effectively, businesses must look to incorporate sustainable development across their entire business model, and position their core activity in a manner that contributes towards the SDG Agenda. Pursuing sustainable development through core business will lead to a more powerful contribution to the SDGs, and help to demonstrate a genuine commitment on the part of the business. Against a backdrop of increasing public pressure, especially from millennials, for businesses to pursue a purpose beyond profit, strong and growing investor sentiment that “companies producing social or environmental benefits alongside financial ones” are more favourable long-term investments, and an expectation amongst the general public that CEOs should take the lead on driving societal change; this will not only drive benefits for wider society, but also for the business itself, as it better realises its stakeholders’ expectations.

Sustainable development is especially relevant within the TMT sector, given the sector’s key role in driving the advancements in science, technology and innovation that have been consistently recognised by the UN and other groups as a critical enabler for achieving the SDGs. Novel and technology-driven approaches are required if we want to achieve key targets, placing TMT organisations at the cutting edge, and providing them with the opportunity, and obligation, to lead on development in this area. Many TMT organisations already have, and will continue to be, at the forefront of delivering on the SDGs; and the 2019 TMT Predictions show how the opportunities exist for this to grow further in the coming years.