Business Opens the Discussion on a New UN Development Paradigm

(New York, 25 September 2012) – On the same day that Heads of State addressed the UN General Assembly and the Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda held its first meeting, leaders from business, government and civil society convened around business’ role in furthering the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and in being part of the process of creating a new set of Sustainable Development Goals.

The Deputy Prime Minister of Kenya, H.E. Wycliffe Musalia Mudavadi, told the group that public-private cooperation will be key to unlocking the potential of the future development agenda.

“The biggest challenge where I come from is, can we establish a sustainable partnership between public and private sectors,” he said in a wrap-up to the day-long session. “The rules of this partnership should be incorporated in legislative or legal frameworks, not personal relationships,” he added.

“The rule of law is being strengthened in developing countries around the world, allowing new investment on a massive scale,” said Georg Kell, UN Global Compact Executive Director, who hosted the closing session of the seminar. “This investment is increasingly being made with a long-term perspective, coming to grips with resource constraints in areas such as energy and water, and market constraints such as severe poverty.”

With most of the MDG targets set to expire in 2015, Governments at the UN have asked the Secretary-General to make recommendations on a post-2015 development agenda. In addition, a major outcome of the recent UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) was a decision that a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) should be created as a viable replacement, consistent with the post-2015 process. In both cases, the private sector is to be consulted.

Unilever Vice President of Global External Affairs Miguel Pestana suggested that the SDGs should cover four major areas: the poverty-fighting and personal living-standard objectives of the MDGs; economic growth and the conditions for making it sustainable; inclusiveness and equity; and environmental sustainability. Unilever’s CEO Paul Polman is a member of the High-level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda.

Business’ input to the post-MDG process should be to identify “the biggest, most urgent problems facing the global community, and how the private sector can help to solve them,” said John Fallon, Chief Executive of Pearson International. We should “retain the MDGs’ simplicity, but give a harder edge to them in terms of efficacy and outcome.”

In regard to business’ role in measuring efficacy and outcome, NovoNordisk Executive Vice President Lise Kingo said that “if there is one thing we do well it is to set ambitious goals and hold ourselves accountable for achieving them”.

The recommendations of the High-level Panel and of an inter-governmental Open Working Group on the Sustainable Development Goals will be taken up at the next General Assembly plenary in September 2013.

In addition to the UN Global Compact, sponsors of the 25 September seminar on “Business, the MDGs and Beyond” were Business Fights Poverty, Business Call to Action, the Overseas Development Institute, and the UN Development Programme.

• AGENDA: Business, the MDGs and Beyond
• For information on the role of the UN Global Compact regarding the upcoming UN development agenda, see the September 2012 Global Compact white paper (rev Dec. 2012).

Contact

Tim Wall
UN Global Compact
wallt@un.org