KARACHI: The corporate adoption of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and formulating a framework for corporate reporting of SDGs is vital for businesses, said experts at a roundtable conference. “This segment is important for acquiring knowledge, inserting SDGs in business strategic planning and attempt to rank companies according to their achievement of SDGs. Business and finance leaders drive to identify and engage with barriers to mainstreaming SDGs in Pakistan demonstrates their recognition of 2030 Agenda’s potential for true economic transformation,” they said. “From better management of risk and the ability to access new capital flows, to taking advantage of new business models, the private sector in Pakistan can use SDGs as a framework for enduring prosperity creation.” Experts were of the view that work should to be done to educate shareholders, especially institutional shareholders, through shareholder activism to bring about meaningful change and get government to put in incentives rather than legislation to persuade private sector to adopt SDGs. “The United Nations goals had been in the domain of the government and this was the perception for earlier MDGs set in 2000, which came to a very poor ending in 2015 when Pakistan failed to meet any of its adopted MDGs.” “In February last year, the National Assembly adopted UN SDGs as part of Pakistan’s development agenda. However, current set of SDGs have to be adopted and delivered by public and private sectors and latter cannot abdicate its responsibility through the sole pursuit of maximising profits and shareholder wealth via short-termism.” “This means more investor attention has to be dedicated to a long-term analysis of the enterprises value adding ability to the economy and society.” Fuad Hashmi, executive director of the Centre of Excellence for Responsible Business (CERB), said: “The CERB had identified 7 UN SDGs that they considered necessary for adoption by most Pakistan businesses.” “The CERB had conducted a baseline survey on gender diversity in business sector in Pakistan, which illustrated how far organisations were off track on SDG (5) – gender equality. The CERB recommended actions in this area, including measuring the pay gap, developing pipeline, equity in promotions and working on better retention especially post marriage”. He stated that the Pakistan Business Council had approved for general adoption among its members World Economic Forum’s Compact for Responsive and Responsible Leadership and was of the view that such adoption by the Pakistan Stock Exchange for its listed companies would go a long way towards the private sector’s contribution to achievement of SDGs. The PBC advocated some fiscal incentives in this context when recommending its proposals for 2017 budget, including influence the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) to dedicate resource to capacity building on SDG adoption and reporting, set and agree shared targets at country, provincial, city, industrial sector and corporate levels, make governance changes. Jimmy Greer, head of Sustainability at the ACCA was of the view that the ACCA’s report on developing a reporting framework on SDGs would be released in November 2017 and this would provide both the ACCA and the CERB with further opportunity to go back to stakeholders with interventions to help address some of the gaps identified. “More partners will be needed to resource such efforts and take ownership of creating an enabling environment for SDGs adoption,” said Arif Masud Mirza, ACCA’s regional head of policy. Cristina Martinez de Silva, senior Programme Manager Corporate Governance at UNCTAD, said: “While SDG’s target 12.6 encourages companies to integrate sustainability information into their reporting cycle, core reporting indicators are fundamental to establishing criteria for what constitutes a sustainability report both in developed and developing economies.” It is said that Karachi is home to country’s top multinational companies. It has some of the top universities in engineering, medicine and business management. It also has a vibrant financial services sector as well as South Asia’s top performing stock exchange not to mention it contributes the lion’s share of taxation to the national exchequer. But the civil society and corporate were witnessing country’s worst performance in solid waste management, appalling traffic on roads, income inequalities of Dickensian standards and ‘water everywhere and not a drop to drink’ is an apt metaphor describing the water issues that plague Karachi. All of these challenges are captured in 17 UN SDGs, which articulated in easy language capture economic, social, and environmental and governance outcomes. According to saying of Mark Wilson, CEO of Aviva, UK’s largest general insurer and Canada’s second largest, “It is enlightened self-interest that determines why business will act sustainably. If business isn’t sustainable then society is at risk. And if society isn’t sustainable then business is at risk.” Published in Daily Times, September 10th 2017.