Interview: Sustainable development goals offer business opportunities: expert

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) present huge opportunities for the business sector and meanwhile asks enterprises to bear more social responsibilities in promoting sustainable development, said Liang Xiaohui, a Chinese expert.

Liang is an analyst with China National Textile and Apparel Council, a national federation of textile-related industries. He has been announced by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as one of ten local SDG Pioneers for his dedication to helping Chinese sectors develop their sustainability initiatives.

In a recent interview with Xinhua, Liang said trillions of dollars will be invested in areas related to SDGs, and those responsible enterprises which can offer means to achieve the goals can benefit from the development trend.

Meanwhile, the implementation of SDGs relies very much on how businesses interpret and integrate SDGs into their business strategies, models and practices, he noted.

The SDGs are 17 goals adopted by UN member states in last September to guide the world's development in next 15 years, which basically redefines how the world works together to end poverty, promote gender equality, and combat climate change.

Liang said SDGs are put forward to tackle the greatest challenges of our age, and are meant to achieve positive and fundamental changes.

"But changes start to happen on the ground and in small places," he noted, highlighting the critical role which can be played by the business sector in promoting social development.

He said enterprises must understand what are the social problems need to be solved under the SDG framework and innovate their business models, products as well as services based on corresponding solutions.

In 2005, Liang started working on China's first industry-based Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative -- a human rights risk-based management system in China's textile industry.

Over the past decade, he has been working to promote CSR to all sectors in China. Nowadays, over 20 Chinese sectors have a standing CSR or sustainability program.

"These happened because pioneering business leaders learned to translate the pressure and expectation from the society or value chain into business practices that deliver social good, as well as new business opportunities," said Liang.

As for sustainable development, what a company can contribute is to well manage the negative impacts it might exert on the environment as well as its employees and customers, he said.

In practice, companies can invest in welfare of the employees, provide them with training programs; they can also develop green and low carbon products and production chains to meet the need of market, he added. Enditem