NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

In 2015, the United Nations issued a call to action to all the countries of the world when they ratified The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs, which are intended to serve as a blueprint for global peace and prosperity, call for the end of poverty and hunger and the rise of climate action, clean energy solutions, and equality. 

The social impact business movement has grown exponentially in the five years since the SDGs were ratified. ESG and impact investments have become some of the most popular investments in global financial markets. Increasing numbers of entrepreneurs are targeting one or more of the SDGs in their growing businesses. 

So how much progress has been made? Last year, the UN released The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2020 which assesses the impact of efforts to achieve the SDGs over the last five years. They report that “some gains were visible: the share of children and youth out of school had fallen; the incidence of many communicable diseases was in decline; access to safely managed drinking water had improved; and women’s representation in leadership roles was increasing.” Yet, despite these notable successes, the report also found that “the number of people suffering from food insecurity was on the rise, the natural environment continued to deteriorate at an alarming rate, and dramatic levels of inequality persisted in all regions. Change was still not happening at the speed or scale required.”

Progress toward the Global Goals has been far from sufficient. The U.N. has declared “A Decade of Action,” where we must “advance a shared vision and accelerate responses to the world’s gravest challenges – from eliminating poverty and hunger to reversing climate change.”

In this session, Impact Entrepreneur’s Laurie Lane-Zucker moderates a discussion about the state of social impact and how impact investing and entrepreneurship can step up and meet the challenges of the Decade of Action with the Global Impact Investing Network’s CEO Amit Bouri, Echoing Green’s Cheryl Dorsey, Blended Value’s Jed Emerson and the U.S. Impact Investing Alliance’s Fran Seegull.