Ghanaian companies CEOs urged to increase investments for SDGs

Ghanaian companies CEOs urged to increase investments for SDGs. Ghana’s private sector operators have been urged to scale up their commitments to adopting sustainable and socially responsible policies to ensure the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The Executive Director of the UN Global Compact Network- Ghana, Tolu Delacroix, who made the call, said it was important for businesses to uphold sustainable business practices in their operations and increase their investments to achieve the goals in the next six and half years.

Speaking at a UN Global Compact CEOs Breakfast Meeting, Mr Delacroix said although some progress had been made in advancing the goals in Ghana, much more needed to be done by the private sector organisations to ensure the goals were achieved by the 2030 deadline.

The CEOs Breakfast Meeting discussed the latest global CEO survey by the UN Global Compact and Accenture and the SDG Stocktake Report and introduced the ForwardFaster Initiative.

Mr Delacroix said Ghana had done quite well in some areas of the SDGs but much more needed to be done in the next six and half years by accelerating efforts, especially from the private sector, which must make significant contributions to support the attainment of the goals.

He said Ghana needed about $43 billion annually to finance the SDGs and government could not be relied upon to provide these resources, necessitating improvements in investments from companies to fill the gap.

Touching on the Forward Faster Initiative, which is a global platform for ambitious credible action guiding companies on where to make the biggest, fastest impact for 2030, Mr Delacroix said the initiative focused on five areas of action namely, gender equality, climate action, living wage, water resilience and finance and investment.

The five areas have been selected because they have the power to accelerate progress across all 17 Global Goals and are where the private sector can make the biggest, fastest impact by 2030.

Mr Sulemanu Koney, Board Chairman of the UN Global Compact Network Ghana, said investors and other key stakeholders had become more aware of the importance of the ESG criteria in their investment decisions and this has caused many businesses to make efforts to integrate ESG into their operations and business strategies.

However, despite this, there is not enough progress happening to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, necessitating the need to double our efforts.

 He said with the deadline for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development fast approaching, there is the need to be more ambitious and put words into action.

It is in this direction that the UN Global Compact has introduced the Forward Faster Initiative, a global platform for ambitious credible action guiding companies on where to make the biggest, fastest impact for 2030.

 This initiative addresses 5 areas of action namely, gender equality, climate action, living wage, water resilience and finance and investment, which have been selected because they have the power to accelerate progress across all 17 Global Goals.

The UN Global Compact Network Ghana is a special initiative by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, mandated to support businesses in aligning their operations with ten universal principles in the areas of Human rights, Labor, Environment, and Anti-Corruption and to contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.

The Network offers expertise, best practices, and technical resources and promotes sustainable practices among Ghanaian businesses by providing access to tools and benchmarking resources, guidance on sustainable reporting, facilitating accelerator modules on key sustainability topics and providing a platform for engagement through events and dialogues.

The UN Global Compact was the world’s largest corporate sustainability and social responsibility initiative with more than 20,000 corporate participants with the objective to mainstream the 10 business sustainability principles in business activities all over the world.

Source: GNA