Role of business
Delivering the SDGs represents a challenge of far greater magnitude than that of the MDGs. The greatly expanded set of goals, from eight simple goals to 17 Goals and 169 targets – demands a much greater degree of understanding and sophistication than any government, development agency or NGO can coordinate alone regardless of how large they are. In addition, the cost of delivering the SDGs will be so great, they defy conception.
It has been estimated that meeting the targets will cost as much as USD 2-3 trillion per annum over the fifteen year lifespan of the goals. Given the scale of the challenge and that the MDGs were only a partial success it was widely understood that the new regime needed to learn from past mistakes, mainly the failure to ensure that business was sufficiently involved from the earliest point.
Unlike in the case of the MDGs, businesses actively fed into the design and plans for financing of the SDGs through the UN Global Compact. The Addis Ababa Action Agenda for Financing the SDGs outcome document includes the private sector in its vision of “Multi-stakeholder partnerships” and calls for “the resources, knowledge and ingenuity of the private sector […] to mobilize and share knowledge, expertise, technology and financial resources, to complement the efforts of Governments […]” .