How new ISO/UNDP guidelines will help business achieve SDGs

With only six years remaining, calls to intensify efforts and rapidly accelerate progress towards the SDGs are increasing. According to The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2024, only 17% of the SDG targets are on track to being achieved globally by 2030.

This September saw a world-first for businesses globally: the launch of freely available guidelines to support businesses and organizations in speeding up their response to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The ISO/UNDP guidelines for contributing to the UN SDGs present a common approach for businesses and organizations to align their strategies with the SDGs, allowing for the specific documentation of progress towards achieving them.

The 17 SDGs, adopted by 193 countries in 2015, are broadly designed to end poverty, inequality and protect the planet, while also ensuring that all people enjoy health, justice and prosperity by 2030. A lot has happened in the years since their adoption; the COVID-19 pandemic, widespread increases in inflation and the cost of living, conflict and geopolitical tension, and growing climate change-related events have hampered progress. In August this year the UN warned that along with a startlingly small percentage of the SDGs being on track, a further 33% are either stalled or regressing.

To meet the SDGs requires a continuation in the wider shift in thinking that sees business and organizations as powerful agents of change in this respect. One thing is certain: the SDG guidelines represent a key step forward, offering tangible ways in which businesses the world over can fast-track their progress toward meeting their SDG targets. The collaboration in the guidelines’ development combined ISO's expertise in setting global standards with UNDP's deep knowledge of development challenges to create the first ever guidebook explicitly aligned with the SDGs.

Over time, businesses have increasingly come to realize the interwoven nature of the SDGs across every aspect of the economy. They represent a plan of action for people, planet and prosperity holistically. They require partnerships between a range of stakeholders – each bringing their unique set of skills and experience – to drive the progress needed to meet the goals in six years’ time.

Many businesses and organizations increasingly understand the need to integrate SDG goals into their strategies, but even for the largest, there is no instruction manual or inherently obvious way to do this. As a result, the key question is often “how?”

The new ISO/UNDP guidelines for the SDGs offer a blueprint, providing recommendations designed to help organizations think broadly about sustainable development, considering its economic, environmental and social elements. They offer practical advice on how to integrate sustainable development into all functions and decision-making processes. And they provide examples, showcasing different business models and new ways of working that have been proven to accelerate innovation and allocate resources more effectively. As a result, organizations that implement the guidelines will be better placed to anticipate the risks and opportunities related to sustainable development earlier, and in turn, manage them better.

The guidelines offer a valuable tool that complements the wider efforts underway to address sustainable development and sit comfortably alongside initiatives like the UN Global Compact and CFO Coalition for the SDGs, which supports chief financial officers in integrating sustainable development objectives into their corporate strategy.

The guidelines are also the first major outcome of ISO’s strategic partnership with UNDP after the organizations formalized their collaboration in September 2023. This is part of ISO’s wider commitment to strengthen sustainability efforts globally, a sentiment that is embedded across its more than 25,000 standards.

Underscoring ISO’s long-term commitment to supporting businesses in their sustainability goals, the guidelines are now in the process of evolving into an international standard – the world’s first for the SDGs – building on both ISO’s relevant standards and the UNDP’s SDG Impact Standards.

Our organizations offer one example of what is achievable when entities from different spheres collaborate to effect wider change. This mirrors a wider focus on advocacy, epitomized by the UN’s Summit for the Future Action Days held recently, the UN General Assembly and ongoing Climate Week NYC. As part of moves to generate further opportunities to engage all actors, these initiatives are bringing together many stakeholders who are shaping and will be critical to the implementation of the SDG goal-focused Pact for the Future. The ISO-UNDP partnership supports this work, offering a real-world means to make tangible progress.

At the heart of the SDGs is the message that no one be left behind. In the same vein, the new ISO-UNDP guidelines are designed to ensure that no business or organization is left behind in the race to meet the 2030 target for these vital global goals.

Organizations and businesses globally can harness the guidelines to move from SDG alignment to SDG action, placing sustainable development at the core of their operations. The guidelines are freely available for businesses and organizations worldwide to download via iso.org/SDGguidelines.