Making the SDGs relevant to business

This short report summarises the current knowledge on the interests of companies and policymakers to link the UN Sustainability Goals (the SDGs) to business needs and explores the interest in using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as a tool to support the use of SDGs.

There has been a flurry of proposals and reports on how to bridge the gap between the “official” SDG’s and what companies can contribute. Some reports have focused on the importance and business benefits of business involvement, while others have focused on identifying the extent of current business interest and efforts. Many organisations and joint initiatives have written whitepapers that address the links between the SDG’s and existing reporting frameworks, and how to select the most relevant SDG’s. We review a few of the most interesting (in our view) in the following.

We conclude in Section 7 that there are many on-going parallel initiatives that addresses business stakeholder issues as well as gaps and needs, but none of these addresses the specific potential contributions and solutions that can be offered by linking the SDGs to life cycle impact pathway frameworks.

In Section 8 we shortly introduce our new project “Linking the UN Sustainable Development Goals to life cycle impact pathway frameworks” that aims to overcome the identified gaps by developing a clear linkage between the visionary process that led to the creation of the SDG’s and all the science-based knowledge, data and methodology in the Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment area.