Global Goals that work: For business, government and people

The document advocates for the adoption of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a 'shared language' to harmonise fragmented sustainability data across governments, businesses, and investors. It identifies three primary barriers to this alignment: the proliferation of disconnected datasets, tenuous links between data suppliers and users, and data inequalities affecting the poorest populations. To overcome these, the report proposes five principles: setting direction through benchmarking, connecting stakeholders, sharing open data, integrating goals into institutional DNA, and communicating progress through integrated reporting. The text highlights the systemic risk of ignoring these goals, using the 2011 Thailand floods as an example of how environmental shocks create global economic disruptions.

• The current landscape of sustainability measurement is highly fragmented, with over 2,500 metrics for sustainable supply chains and more than 34 frameworks for tracking biodiversity.
• The 2011 floods in Thailand demonstrate systemic risk, where local environmental disasters caused global economic impacts, including $21bn in physical asset damage and production halts for companies like Honda in the UK.
• The SDGs present significant economic opportunities, such as a projected $28 trillion increase in global economy by 2025 if women's labour force participation equalled that of men, and an expected 20 million electric vehicles on the road by 2020.
• In India, water management is hindered by inconsistencies between reporting frameworks: corporate reporting focuses on extraction, national metrics on infrastructure, and global scales on access.
• Open data can significantly drive economic value and accountability, with McKinsey estimating the global value of better and more open data at $3 trillion per year.
• Several countries have integrated the SDGs into high-level governance: Slovenia created a Ministerial post for sustainable development, while Mexico, Bangladesh, and Colombia aligned efforts with the President's Office.
• The cost of inaction on climate change and biodiversity is extreme, with climate losses expected to reach $24 trillion (17% of world assets) and deforestation costing the global economy up to $4.5 trillion annually.

APA

Green Economy Coalition (n.d.). Global Goals that work: For business, government and people. https://www.greeneconomycoalition.org/assets/reports/External-Reports/Global-Goals-that-Work.pdf

Chicago

Green Economy Coalition. Global Goals that work: For business, government and people. n.d. https://www.greeneconomycoalition.org/assets/reports/External-Reports/Global-Goals-that-Work.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Green Economy Coalition |title=Global Goals that work: For business, government and people |url=https://www.greeneconomycoalition.org/assets/reports/External-Reports/Global-Goals-that-Work.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{greeneconomycoalitionndglobal, author = {{Green Economy Coalition}}, title = {{Global Goals that work: For business, government and people}}, institution = {Green Economy Coalition}, url = {https://www.greeneconomycoalition.org/assets/reports/External-Reports/Global-Goals-that-Work.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }