The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)were created by the United Nations to guide and organize the efforts of the various signatory countries in implementing a new development pattern that is fairer, more inclusive, and more aware of the planet's limits. In this process, companies play as important a role as the public policies advocated.

The agendas of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21) and the SDGs are complementary and mutually reinforcing, and can be integrated and translated into business language. Solutions presented in Paris under the Low Carbon Technology Partnerships initiative (LCPTi) cover 11 SDGs and could contribute to enabling 65% of the set of voluntary targets presented by countries (INDCs).

The SDGs are organized in the form of 17 objectives and 169 goals, interconnected and of an integrated nature, applicable to all countries, respecting cultural and development differences, which are often abysmal between them.

By emphasizing issues related to overcoming poverty and access to a standard of comfort and well-being that is still absurdly far from the reality of so many countries and populations, the document's systemic vision reaffirms the certainty that sustainability is necessarily anchored in three dimensions: economic, social and environmental. Any action that excludes any of these dimensions is not sustainable.

While populations condemned to misery and deprivation end up becoming a factor of pressure on natural resources, extreme inequality is reaffirmed in the choice of a minority for a consumption pattern incompatible with the possibilities of the planet.

Two examples of actions, however, make us believe that a new institutional framework can articulate the three levels of public administration, the private sector, civil society and academia, enabling us to effectively achieve the SDG targets. In the specific case of water management, we have the “Movement to reduce water losses in distribution”, led by the Brazilian Global Compact Network and the “Cultivating good water” initiative, by the company Itaipu Binacional.

The first case is that of an articulation that, in academic jargon, we can call multi-stakeholder, that is, the mobilization of a network of interested parties with the objective of minimizing losses in the transportation and distribution of water, a problem currently responsible for the waste of 6.5 billion cubic meters. Municipal, state and federal governments, as well as civil society organizations, citizens and companies undertake coordinated actions aimed at achieving lower levels of losses, saving this resource that is becoming increasingly scarce.

“Cultivating good water“is an action that is being developed in the Paraná River basin, between the states of Mato Grosso do Sul and Paraná, and has been successfully tackling the problems resulting from the silting of the tributaries and the Paraná River itself, the eutrophication of parts of the river and the infestation of the golden mussel, a pest with effective destructive potential for the region’s fauna and flora. These are problems associated with deforestation and land misuse. Thus, it is through the collaboration and articulation of the many spheres of interest involved that the awareness of preserving a common heritage results.

To help the private sector understand and adopt the SDGs, CEBDS, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the Brazilian Global Compact Network prepared the SDG Guide for Businesses. The publication explains how to place sustainability at the center of corporations' operating strategies, adding technologies that will ensure businesses last, fulfill their socio-environmental role and contribute to ensuring inclusive conditions of access to goods and products.

By incorporating the SDGs into business models, the innovative bias, a corollary of the entrepreneurial spirit that drives the business sector, will be at the service of changing the way we produce and consume. Sustainable production and consumption will also increasingly become competitive advantages without which companies will not survive.

Read more about the Sustainable Development Goals here.