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ECOSOC 2018 Partnership Forum
With 8 per cent of people around the world living in poverty, and 192 million unemployed, achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development would require unleashing the power of the business community to solve entrenched structural ills, delegates told the Economic and Social Council Partnership Forum today.
Held under the theme of “Partnering for resilient and inclusive societies: contributions of the private sector”, the Council’s day‑long meeting featured four panel discussions, which broadly explored business practices to promote the participation of vulnerable populations and the potential of partnerships that harnessed big data to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
In opening remarks, Deputy Secretary‑General Amina Mohammed said the private sector was an indispensable partner in collective efforts to reduce inequalities and promote the social, economic and political inclusion of all. Better engagement with companies would require an enabling policy environment and dialogue that encouraged firms “to do business in a way that works for global good, and for the bottom line”, she said.
For its part, the United Nations must ensure transparency and accountability in its partnerships, she said, notably through the Global Compact and at the local level. Member States should stay engaged with companies to improve their reporting and align their businesses with the priorities of national Governments.
Along those lines, Council President Marie Chatardova (Czech Republic) said sustainable business models could unlock economic opportunities worth up to $12 trillion and increase employment by up to 380 million jobs by 2030. The private sector could create more inclusive value chains, establish diversity policies, include marginalized groups in decision‑making and spur disruptive innovations that brought marginalized groups into the mainstream of economic and social life.
In a panel titled “From commitment to results: contributions of the private sector to the delivery of the sustainable development goals”, Bob Wigley, Chairperson of UK Finance, described how blockchain technology could increase transparency around payments made in pursuit of the Sustainable Development Goals at a time when some 1.5 billion people worldwide could not prove who they were and lacked access to financial services.
On that point, Vincent Molinari, Chief Executive Officer of Liquid M Capital, speaking on a panel titled “Inclusive business models for women and vulnerable groups”, said blockchain approaches could be used to digitally format social impact bonds. That, in turn, could reduce corruption and give identities to underserved stakeholders, allowing them to control their own data. “Capital flows must be unblocked,” he said. “If we can empower women and youth, we begin to change the essence of how we view the [Sustainable Development] Goals.”
An afternoon panel on “The role of the private sector in unleashing the potential of big data for public good” explored how to unlock the power of big data to accelerate humanitarian action. Robert Kirkpatrick, Director of United Nations Global Pulse, explained that big data allowed people to see into the dynamics of hunger, conflict and disease. Users had found ways to use real time information to model the spread of disease, understand mass movements of people after disaster, what people paid for food and where people were facing discrimination. Indeed, inclusion was “a tricky issue” for big data: its benefits were not reaching those who needed them most and the skills to unlock its potential were in the hands of the few. Getting to a future where big data was used for the public good required improved privacy protections.
“There’s an ethical obligation to work for the greater good, even though it comes with risk,” he said. Getting to scale would require an evolution in how big data was regulated and in balancing the risks of use against non‑use in ways that were grounded in science, sensitive to context and placed rights “front and centre”.
In a final panel on “Building momentum for the SDGs: the role of big data”, Anil Arora, Chief Statistician at Statistics Canada, said the Government had made a choice not to be “data rich” and “information poor”. Highlighting its strong commitment to evidence and data in decision‑making, he said it was the job of science to translate significant amounts of data into consumable, high‑quality information. The value of data lay in what happened over time and the ability to consistently compare one region to another.
“You cannot fix what you cannot see,” added Andrew Zolli, Vice‑President of Global Impact Initiatives at Planet Inc.
Council President Chatardova delivered closing remarks alongside Elliot Harris, Assistant Secretary‑General for Economic Development and Chief Economist in the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, speaking on behalf of the Under‑Secretary‑General for Economic and Social Affairs.
In other business today, the Council decided that the theme for its 2018 humanitarian affairs segment would be “Restoring humanity, respecting human dignity and leaving no one behind: working together to reduce people’s humanitarian need, risk and vulnerability”, adopting a decision submitted by Vice‑President Jerry Matthews Matjila (South Africa) on the basis of informal consultations.
The Council also elected Luxembourg by acclamation to the Commission on Population and Development, for a term beginning on the date of election and expiring at the close of the Commission’s fifty‑fourth session in 2021. It postponed the following elections of: two members from African States, for a term beginning at the first meeting of the Commission’s fifty‑second session and expiring at the close of its fifty‑fifth session in 2022; two members from the Asia‑Pacific States, for a term beginning on the date of election and expiring at the close of the Commission’s fifty‑fourth session in 2021; and one member from the Asia‑Pacific States, beginning at the first meeting of the fifty‑second session and expiring at the close of the fifty‑fifth session.
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