Impact management and measurement needed to achieve the UN SDGs
By Anne Adrain, Head of Sustainability & Reporting
12 November 2020
This article considers the emerging issue of impact management and measurement needed to achieve the UN SDGs.
The topic of impact management and measurement is gaining increasing focus from investors, management and other key stakeholders as a means of aligning their decision-making with the achievement of the UN SDGs.
Impact management allows organisations to set their impact objectives, monitor their performance in relation to those objectives and measure their impact.
As with many of these evolving areas that are not fully mainstreamed into the corporate reporting system, the landscape is currently fragmented with a variety of different initiatives crowding this space.
There are some signs that greater cohesion is on the horizon in the form of the Impact Management Project (IMP) Network, a collaborative network of global organisations, including the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) the United Nations Develop Programme (UNDP) and the World Benchmarking Alliance among others.
The aim of this network is to work towards generally accepted good impact management practice with the ultimate objective of the achievement of common goals such as the UN SDGs.
The UNDP has established SDG Impact to develop tools, standards and other resources for investors, businesses and other key stakeholders to validate their contributions towards the achievement of the UN SDGs.
The UNDP has produced SDG Impact Standards for Private Equity Funds and recently consulted on SDG Impact Standards for Bonds. A second draft of the SDG Impact Standards for Bonds will be published soon.
A consultation is currently underway on proposed SDG Impact Standards for Enterprises and is open for comment until 15 December 2020. These proposed standards map to the SDGD Recommendations published by ICAS and other leading global accountancy bodies.
If you would like to find out more about the SDG Impact Standards, or would like to respond to the consultation on SDG Impact Standards for Enterprises, can do so at the following link: https://sdgimpact.undp.org/enterprise.html