Lately, there has been a flurry of publications and events promoting and facilitating the contribution of businesses to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (1, 2, 3). However, sometimes it seems like companies are doing more reporting than actually using the goals to drive business change.

Needless to say these efforts (and pressures) have a strong potential to stimulate action. They can also stimulate companies to impute old and routine activities, exaggerate their impact and twist their contributions to the SDGs.

Based on an analysis of some sustainability reports and a few awards for SDGs contributions (with obvious greenwashing) we have distilled five criteria to assess the legitimacy of these contributions:

  • Material. Contributions must be material (not in the Materiality sense), significant, they cannot be trivial activities that somehow can be related to one or more of the 169 objectives.
  • Additional. Contributions must be in addition to what the company has already been doing before the adoption of the SDGs.
  • Impactful. Contribution must have a tangible impact, measurable or not, but is must produce some noticeable change in the object of the contribution.
  • Contextual. Contributions must be related to the company’s objectives in the context in which operates and on the impact on its stakeholders...
  • Sustainable.  And finally, the contributions must be sustainable over time.

Read the full article about SDG contributions from TriplePundit