Giving Compass' Take:

•  An aligned intermediary strategy that involves both the private and public sector may be the answer to making progress on the SDGs. 

• What is the impetus for corporations to engage with the SDGs and look for impact opportunities?

• Read about how intermediaries can help overcome nonprofit obstacles. 

There are a growing number of investment opportunities for companies and projects developing innovative solutions to environmental and social problems.

Capital in support of such initiatives, however, has not been forthcoming at sufficient scale. This is an example of a “market failure.”  One remedy for such market failures is the concept of an “aligned intermediary,” and it is already being put into practice to address global climate change.

Business community input to the SDGs is welcome, as it is widely acknowledged that the 2030 goals cannot be achieved by the public sector alone.

The aligned intermediary concept is equally relevant to other system-wide challenges such as resource scarcity, inequality in all its forms, food security, and all other topics covered by the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), ratified by the United Nations (UN) on 25 September 2015. These goals have been described as “the closet thing the Earth has to a strategy.”

Business community input to the SDGs is welcome, as it is widely acknowledged that the 2030 goals cannot be achieved by the public sector alone.  Indeed, an equal financing burden falls on the private sector, with estimates that private funds will have to close a funding gap of $2.5 trillion per year to ensure that the private sector provides an expected 50% of the SDGs expected $115 trillion total cost.  Corporations have begun seeking out business opportunities tied to the SDGs; according to a PwC survey, 71% of companies say they are already planning how they will engage with the SDGs.

Companies alone, however, cannot solve the funding gap related to sustainable development. There is also a critical role for the global institutional investor community—which raises a long-standing conundrum in development finance.

Read the full article on aligned intermediaries by Dr. Bob Eccles at Forbes.