Together, let’s build back better

In June, the UK Stakeholders for Sustainable Development and the United Nations Global Compact Network UK sent a letter signed by the ICRS to the Prime Minister calling for a socially just and green recovery from Covid-19. ICRS Board Member Robbie Epsom of WSP shares his thoughts on why waiting for Governments to deliver these aims would be a grave mistake, and how business has a role to play in delivering a just recovery.

With collaboration at their core, the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide an existing global framework to build back better after COVID-19 and ensure that all societal and environmental inequalities and challenges are addressed, once and for all. But waiting for Governments to deliver alone would be a grave mistake. This is where business has a role to play.

The COVID-19 pandemic has both further exposed and significantly widened the environmental and social cracks that were already endemic in countries and communities across the world.

From an environmental perspective, COVID-19 has provided us with empirical data on what happens when the world’s economy comes to a standstill for a quarter of the year. This has laid bare the true scale of the net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) challenge that lies ahead, as WSP investigated in our recent blog.

From a social perspective, COVID-19 has exacerbated problems which were already ubiquitous in our society, further widening the poverty and inequality gaps and making the most vulnerable in our communities even more vulnerable.

Recent years have seen a surge in civic protests to address many fundamental issues in our society. From climate change and Extinction Rebellion, to the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements, it’s clear the time for global change has come. But slow and tedious progress will not cut it.

These demonstrations sparked a global conversation: an essential first step in transformational change. However, to make real progress we need collaboration on a global scale. Global collaboration starts locally. That’s why on Tuesday 9th June, WSP and the Institute of Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability (ICRS) joined forces with 150 business, charity and trade body leaders to write to the Prime Minister, calling on his government to put the UN’s SDGs at the centre of the UK’s COVID-19 recovery plans.

The letter re-emphasises a statement made by the Prime Minister at the Financing for Development event on 28th May where he called for "fairer, greener and more resilient global economy" after the pandemic. He said that we must ‘work together to get shared goals back on track including [...] the Sustainable Development Goals’.

At the time of writing, the response from government to the letter has demonstrated a lack leadership or practical action. Even amid a global pandemic that affects all people and all countries equally, national governments have so far come short of kick-starting the global collaboration they call for.

This is where business can help. WSP is convinced that as corporations can transcend borders in ways governments can’t, they ought to be given a greater remit in leading global collaboration as we build back better and transition our economy to one that is truly net zero.

We believe this can apply equally to the delivery of net zero GHG emissions or in addressing the growing public expectation for net zero tolerance on poverty, inequality and the other global challenges which the UN SDG framework brought to the fore.

The time for leadership is here. And, if not now, when? Corporations can project their global strategies and action on environmental, social and governance across borders and cultures quickly and effectively and adjust course as needed. The SDGs provide a blueprint for corporations to follow; the ten year countdown starts now and the Race to Zero is here!

As the UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in the UN’s own call to action to use the SDGs as the framework to build back better, “We need to turn the recovery into a real opportunity to do things right for the future.”

Progressive businesses like WSP and members of the ICRS are already playing their part. What are you waiting for?

PUBLISHED 17 JULY 2020 IN ICRS NEWS

https://icrs.info/articles/icrs-news/together-let%E2%80%99s-build-back-better