By Mark Meaney
CESR Executive Director
I recently had the honor of having been invited by Jonas Haertle, Head of the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) Secretariat, to attend a series of events in New York City leading up to the release on 26 June of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). The promulgation of the SDGs is truly a watershed event in the history of the UN. The goals represent a common global vision and a challenge to all UN member states to make progress toward a more just and sustainable world. In the SDGs, the General Assembly identified the three most “transformational challenges” as combating climate change, sustainable consumption and production to achieve better protection of the oceans and ecosystems, and sustainable energy.
The SDGs were released in conjunction with the celebration on 25 June of the 15th anniversary of the UN Global Compact in General Assembly Hall. The Secretary-General and the President of the UN were both in attendance. The Global Compact is the world’s largest corporate sustainability initiative. It calls on 12,000 signatories to align corporate strategies and operations with universal principles on human rights, labor, environment and anti-corruption, and take actions that advance the common good. The Global Compact will now call on its signatories to align strategies and operations with the new SDGs.
Two groups held meetings leading up to these two events: the Globally Responsible Leadership Initiative (GRLI) on 21-22 June and the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) on 23-24 June. The GRLI is the brain trust tasked by the UN General Assembly to link the Global Compact principles and signatories with business schools on a global scale. The GRLI spawned PRME. It was a pleasure and an honor to have met the founders of PRME.
PRME scheduled its 2015 Global Annual Forum in conjunction with the celebration of the Global Compact and the release of the SDGs. PRME is the first organized relationship between the United Nations and business schools. Since its official launch in 2007, the initiative has grown to more than 500 leading business schools from over 80 countries across the world. The Leeds School of Business became a member of PRME in 2010.
At the PRME Annual Forum, organizers used the concept of “blended finance” as a means by which to link states, corporations and business schools to the implementation of the SDGs. The resources required by the SDGs are immense, $4.5 trillion per annum. Private investment will therefore be essential to augment the efforts of development finance and philanthropic funders. Blended finance is the use of development finance and philanthropic funds to mobilize private capital flows to emerging and frontier markets. In short, it requires public and private partnerships to create sustainable financial markets to better attract private equity to developing economies. Under the PRME Initiative, business schools are called on to integrate the SDGs into curriculum development especially through finance.
I was very excited to have been asked by members of Jonas’ team to become the PRME Chapter North America Secretariat which includes the US and Canada. The members of the Chapter must approve the appointment, so more on this as the February meeting draws near.