UN, private sector and media rally behind promoting the Global Goals

Through an organized virtual forum, the United Nations (UN), private sector and local media houses in Namibia embarked on a ‘partnership journey’ to better contribute to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The Private Sector and the media remain a vital partner in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s). During the strategic media-private partnership the team discussed and identified areas of common interest, challenges and offered possible methods of collaboration to be more impactful.

The SDGs call on media-private sector everywhere to advance sustainable development through the investments they make, the solutions they develop, and the business practices they adopt.

Strengthening stakeholder relations, Errolice Tjipura on behalf of the UN Resident Coordinator’s Office in Namibia re-introduced the fundamentals of the SDG Media Compact to raise awareness of the global goals and to help galvanize further action and commitment from the local media. https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sdg-media-compact-about/.

To better understand how the Private Sector can ramp up efforts of sustainability with its resources, Nkiruka Chiemelu, Senior Manager for Global Operations within the Africa Region presented the UN Global Compact. The Compact, which is a participant based organisation, was launched in 1999 at the World Economic forum by Kofi Annan, and is essentially the private sector management arm for the United Nations.

“The compact works at a global, regional and at a country level to engage businesses on how they can contribute to support, promote and advance sustainable development both through the SDG's, but also through general responsible business practices” Chiemelu declared.

At the core of the UN Global Compact are ten principles which are essentially guidelines for all business to engage around business support and commitment to human rights, labour, environment principles and to anti-corruption. To date, there are more than 11 000 companies, and over 160 countries that are participants of the UN Global Compact.

https://www.unglobalcompact.org/take-action/sdg-action-manager

https://www.unglobalcompact.org/library/3101

https://www.unglobalcompact.org/take-action/sustainableprocurement

The SDG compass which was launched in 2016 or 2017 in collaboration with World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC). It is a tool for businesses to use in order to map and assess where the SDG impacts lie. It also looks at the company from a larger ecosystem perspective www.unglobalcompact.org

Going forward, the partners remain committed to the realization of the SDGs and invested in an eight-week Social Media Campaign to uplift the importance of Namibian made Products and Services to commence September 2020. Errolice Tjipura asserted:

“supporting local businesses promotes the SDG’s, it supports somebody’s dream and family, it grows and hires more people, decreasing unemployment. There are a lot of complementarities that can be synagized to see how we can work together and mobilize this without having large capital injected into it.”

The media-private sector and its contributions to the SDGs would create a large footprint for Namibia on the journey to Vision 2030 and achieving Sustainable Development.