For the UN, India is an incredibly important Test platform : Yuri Afanasiev

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): A Blueprint for Action

Referring to India’s Jan Dhan, Aadhaar, Mobile (JAM) trinity — aimed at plugging subsidy-leakages through direct benefit transfers (DBT), India’s wind and solar energy initiatives and its strides in zero-budget farming, Yuri Afanasiev, UN Resident Coordinator in India and UNDP Resident Representative in India, said “for the UN, India is an incredibly important Petri dish or test platform.”

He was speaking at 13th National Convention of the Global Compact Network India (GCNI), a local arm of the United Nations Global Compact, in Bangalore on Friday, June 8th, 2018.

Terming the Sustainable Development Goals as the first ever truly global agreement, Yuri Afanasiev said “The solutions for the SDGs are being invented in India today. The more you become a global super power the more you share the solutions with others.” India is responsible for about 50% of the SDG agenda.

“India has an amazing capacity for innovation. I like to call it Jugaad 2.0. India has an incredible capacity to think about things differently. Traditionally it would take 150 years to solve the problem and 10 times the expense. India is solving problems that has taken other countries ten years to even think about. The solutions for the SDGs are being invented in India today. The more you become a global super power the more you share the solutions with others,” he added.

Scaling Globally

India’s experience in the digital identity programme, solar and wind energy, agriculture are expected to be replicated first among India’s immediate neighbours followed by African countries.

“India’s becoming one of the biggest development partners — one of the biggest donors. And it’s not only because you have to do it. It is your DNA; you want to do it. You want your African brothers and Asian brothers to achieve the successes that you’re achieving, and overcome problems and challenges that you have overcome. Why? Because you understand each other. Because you come from a background of developmental challenges, poverty, rural development, colonial backgrounds, etc. You can relate to each other well, and that’s where I think the spirit of solidarity and mutual support and cohabitation or coexistence comes from,” Yuri Afanasiev said.

The Missing Piece in India’s Digital Identity Programme

“Digital identity is catching up, not only in India but elsewhere in the world. I think the uniqueness about the India experience is the linkage of their identity with the bank account and with the mobile. To me there is still kind of a missing piece of what I call asset — in other words poor people who have a bank account and who have an identity but don’t have an asset can’t go to access finance in a legitimate way; So I think there needs to be some look at how you quantify even the assets of poor people; and we’re not talking about millions right we’re talking about maybe that little house or that little shack that they live in, costs maybe $1,000, maybe the parcel of land they work on costs another $5,000. But together it’s $6,000, allowing them to access credit to expand their business and improve the lot of their family or send their kids for education,” said Yuri Afanasiev.

Triple Bottom Line

The phrase, “people, planet, and profit” to describe the triple bottom line and the goal of sustainability, was coined by John Elkington in 1994 and was later used as the title of the Anglo-Dutch oil company Shell’s first sustainability report in 1997.

“As a former business person, I was once one of you — I couldn’t care less about anything else. I was concerned about making a profit. I am absolutely convinced that in 10 years, no business will be successful unless it has a social, sustainability and a commercial bottom line. The three things will live together. I think new models of doing business are coming where the three the social environmental and the business become integrated into one and become interdependent,” said Afanasiev.

Data & Analytics

“Another element where we need to partner is data and analytics. We are discovering that a lot of the assumptions that government has about the challenges it has are frequently incomplete, insufficient, or frankly, wrong. How can we combine official data, public data, UN data with data you generate through knowing your industry, through knowing your sector? And how do we use it propitiously to solve or identify problems and solutions,” he said.

Lobbying

“The structure of engagement with government; I know many of you will have access to government authorities, and it was great and you should do that. Business well-being with with politicians and government is a kind of a legitimate activity. Still in India, we see that government does not trust business and business doesn’t trust government. How can we pool together around issues so that your lobbying does not take the form of a company lobbying for its own success story and exclusively for itself, but lobbies for, as somebody was saying before me, market improvement where — I wrote this down — where CEOs are most concerned about regulation, investment and incentives,” said Afanasiev.

UN INDIA BUSINESS FORUM

Sue Allchurch, Chief, Outreach and Engagement UNGC(New York) emphasised that there was $12 trillion to be made and 380 million new jobs to be created globally by businesses whose work advanced the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This will also create $1 trillion of market opportunities for the private sector and 77 million jobs in India.

The UN India Business Forum was jointly hosted by the GCNI and UN in Bangalore on the previous day.

In an interaction with Heather Grady, Vice President, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, Ravichandran Natarajan, Head, Partnerships & Corporate Relations, Tata Trusts said that the firm had already aligned all its programs to the SDG framework. “The new normals are going to be governed by data and collaboration,” he said. Tata Trusts has set up a data driven development planning platform — DELTA (Data, Evaluation, Learning, Technology and Analysis).

“Indian government has shown a firm faith in the Sustainable Development Goals with our Prime Minister expressing his commitment by saying that sustainable development is a matter of faith for our country. As we target 10% growth in the next couple of years, it is imperative that we ensure an inclusive development. And I think we are trying to make an impact by touching across the spectrum of the goals. These goals, also known as Global Goals, build on the success of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s) and call for action by all countries to promote prosperity while protecting the planet. These broad goals recognize that complex sustainability challenges cannot be effectively resolved by disintegrated initiatives,” said Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog.

Indian businesses poised to contribute to the Agenda 2030:SDGs

According to the GCNI — Accenture CEO Study Indian businesses are well poised to contribute to the Agenda 2030: Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with 91% Indian CEOs believing that the SDGs provide an essential opportunity for business to rethink approaches to sustainable value creation. The SDGs present a $1 trillion worth of market opportunities for companies working in the sustainable area in India and employment generation potential of 72 million by 2030.

L-R: Dr. Uddesh Kholi, Mr. Vishvesh Prabhakar, Mr. D K Hota, Mr. Shashi Shanker, Mr. Yuri Afanasiev, Ms. Sue Allchurch, Mr. Kamal Singh

The study reveals that the Indian CEOs are more aware of the Agenda 2030. 86% Indian CEOs as compared to 78% globally believe that they know how their company can contribute to the SDGs through their business. Further 86% of Indian CEOs (75% globally) mentioned that their company has the skills and capabilities to take action on the SDGs now. The study captures insights from CEOs of leading companies in India through an online survey of 45+ companies in addition to CEO insights from 15+ business leaders.

Today’s launch of the India’s CEOs Study is the part of a larger event “SDGs: Blueprint for Action” to mobilise action on the SDGs. The “Blueprint for action” puts emphasis on the real on-ground actions that the businesses need to adopt to make a real impact on achieving the SDGs and to create economic value for the nation.

Innovative Practices Awards on SDGs

The Global Compact Network India (GCNI) invited breakthrough case studies from comapnies to illustrate the Methodology and Relevance of SDGs in their Business Agenda. GCNI received over 100 nominations nationwide in areas like Food Security, Poverty Alleviation, Clean Energy, Health, Education, Gender Equality, and Creation of Sustainable Cities.

Tata Steel’s Thousand Schools Project, its CSR intervention in the education sector of Odisha, engages children meaningfully and inculcates the habit of going to school and learning, enhances involvement of the community in school governance and introduces a Learning Enrichment Programme (LEP)

ONGC’s OCPF — AES (Agriculture Extension Services) Project works on income enhancement of small and marginal farmers in Northern Karnataka. OCPF-AES project was initiated as Soil health improvement and yield enhancement program. In span of four years, project went on to institutionalise the project farmers into “Producer organizations” (FPOs) and integration of these FPOs into the existing market value chain. In the first phase, seven Farmer Producer Organizations were formed in districts of Gulbarga, Bidar and Raichur. In phase two, the emphasis is on making these FPOs sustainable through market integration, infrastructure support and convergence with various state-sponsored developmental schemes.

The NSE-HelpAge Project “Shraddha” by the India Society of Agribusiness Professionals & National Stock Exchange of India Limited Foundation (NSE) was also recognised for promoting active and healthy ageing among the elderly through self-help collectives.

S P Jain Institute of Management & Research, Mumbai was recognised for its Non-Classroom Learning project — Abhyudaya and Development of Corporate Citizenship, that addresses societal issues in urban and rural India.

Global Compact Network India (GCNI), formed in November 2000, was registered in 2003 as a non-profit society to function as the Indian Local Network of the United Nations Global Compact, New York. GCNI is a country level platform for public & private sector, businesses, civil society organisations, aids in aligning stakeholders’ responsible practices towards the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Ten Universally Accepted Principles of UNGC in the areas of Human Rights, Labour, Environment and Anti-Corruption.

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