Stepping up the ladder: how business can help achieve the MDGs

Business interests do not always coincide with social interests. But interests do not have to be perfectly aligned for a productive partnership to develop. Opportunities must be seized to build new kinds of relationships with the private sector. This paper analyses the role that business can, and has played in helping to contribute towards development. It particularly focuses on efforts towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s).

The author asserts that business is the new topic to watch in 2008 as businesses respond to sustained pressure to contribute to the MDGs. The key is to maintain the pressure and manage engagement and the prize is a new contribution by business to poverty reduction and sustainable livelihoods. The author see’s business leaders, employees and customers all focused on being better citizens and argues that there are many opportunities build on.

The paper outlines four steps for effective engagement of the private sector in efforts to reach the MDGs:

• the first step is business engagement in the community- businesses provide money to support good causes, but also involve staff in fundraising activities or working on project sites. The good cause might be an orphanage, a theatre-workshop, or a social enterprise. The relationship is essentially philanthropic. British Airways supports UNICEF in this way
• taking corporate social responsibility into the heart of companies and committing them to better behaviour. The best example is the UN Global Compact, with ten core principles, derived from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and other instruments covering human rights, labour standards, the environment, and anti-corruption
• businesses working through every aspect of their activity, to ask whether development impact can be improved- often, this involves the supply chain. For example, a hotel can commit to buy supplies from small-scale producers rather than large ones, to create more and better jobs for poor people
• an emerging fourth step on the ladder; involving business in global public policy- water is a good example, where food companies, in particular, are working together on frameworks for managing shortage