Experts on sustainability reporting and inclusive business gathered in New York last month for a discussion on how business can accelerate progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals, one year on from their adoption

Launching a new publication at the annual Business Call to Action (BCtA) Forum, members of the publication team said companies can help the world achieve the SDGs by forming partnerships to measure their impact and reporting on it. Many companies have prioritised specific SDGs that lie outside of their direct concerns, and this broadens the horizons of business’ potential impact.

Companies also have the potential to influence the SDGs priorities of their supplier companies, said Tomohiro Nagasaki, BCtA, who was part of the core publication team. When it comes to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), however, they will need help to measure and report their sustainability impact, Nagasaki said. The field of sustainability reporting “hasn’t done enough to touch the SME market,” added Punji Leagnavar, Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). She said GRI is working to advance SME reporting in many developing countries, where SMEs make up the majority of business.

What can a business do to engage more in sustainability reporting? The report suggests the following steps: understand the SDGs and their business case; set top priorities; disclose impact and performance information; and “socialise” the findings. In other words, the authors stress, companies should not only report, but also make sure the results reach their target audience of peer companies as well as national governments, where it can have the greatest impact.

Governments can build on business’ interest in the SDGs through policies to encourage greater monitoring and measuring of business impact. Faye Leone, another member of the publication team, said governments have good reason to invite private sector data: it can yield a fuller picture of their countries’ progress towards the SDGs. If business is not helping to advance certain Goals, the government can respond by developing incentives, and in this way help to ensure that government priorities, not just business opportunities, drive business efforts for the SDGs. On the positive side, seeing where business is having the greatest impact can lead governments to direct resources to scaling up the most effective efforts. The information collected by a government’s national statistical office, she said, may not be enough to inform such policies.

Leagnavar provided an example from GRI reports, which show that the bulk of issues on which companies in Colombia report are related to SDG 8 (decent work and economic growth). This kind of information “can spark a conversation within a government,” she said, prompting them to ask, is business’ reporting aligned with our national priorities?

A panel of practitioners in the field of inclusive business addressed common challenges in measuring impact. Chief among these is conveying that a reporting exercise can support business’ self-interest. Anuj Mehra, Mahindra Rural Housing Finance Ltd., said his home loan company does not conduct measurement for the sake of measurement, but to incorporate learnings into its branding and business strategy. He highlighted that his clients make fewer hospital visits thanks to a healthier home (SDG 3), and have more women as co-borrowers (SDG 5). Echoing the view that reporting can create value, not only fulfill regulatory requirements, Christian Jahn, executive director of Inclusive Business Action Network (IBAN), said that governments and companies need to “get clear on the motivation of measuring and reporting impact.”

Alexis Geaneotes from International Finance Corporation (IFC) said IFC uses a results monitoring framework to track social, environmental and financial results of its investments, and IFC is mapping its project-level indicators to the SDGs. As for the motivation for IFC and its clients, Geaneotes said results monitoring helps IFC measure and demonstrate the impact on the poor, and it helps clients understand and expand their ability to work with “base-of-the-pyramid” (BOP) communities. This monitoring process, like Mahindra’s, has clear linkages to companies’ effectiveness, as it helps clients increase their reach in BOP markets. 

In all of these practitioners’ experiences, the driver in engaging businesses in sustainability reporting is that it can help them improve their effectiveness. Paula Pelaez, the head of BCtA, emphasised that the combination of IFC’s approach to measurement – which relies on a third-party for a qualitative, insights-based component of the evaluation – and a lean approach to social impact measurement that allows for real-time feedback into company’s decision making is “the ideal world.” Indeed, measuring and reporting business’ impact on the 17 SDGs, in a context as broad and ambitious as the 2030 agenda, is not a job for anyone acting alone. Governments are calling for data from the private sector, individual companies are partnering up with others to report SDG impacts, and investors are turning to expert outsiders to lessen the measuring and reporting burden.

Content on this page is provided by Business Call to Action, sponsor of the The Guardian Business and the Sustainable Development Goals Hub