In September 2015, the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit adopted a framework to guide international development efforts, entitled Transforming our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
The Agenda’s a global roadmap to drive action, which addresses critical issues for humanity and the planet through the collaboration of countries and stakeholders, with the aim of full implementation by the end of this decade. The Agenda’s universally applicable and takes into account different national realities and levels of development whilst respecting national policies and priorities.
The Agenda’s built around 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), also known as Global Goals, and divided into 169 targets. They’re a blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all, addressing the global challenges we face, including poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, peace and justice. The SDGs are a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that by 2030 all people enjoy peace and prosperity.
Why SDGs matter
The adoption of SDGs in 2015 brought renewed attention to the importance of interlinked action across different sectors. The SDGs and targets are all integrated, which means the actions taken in achieving one SDG target may contribute to achieving other goals or targets.
The SDGs were also designed to highlight interlinkages between environmental, economic and social aspects of development, and to point out the gaps and opportunities that have unfolded. As governments and businesses in the private sector such as manufacturers, corporations and developers, plan their approaches to environmental, social and governance (ESG) initiatives, they must balance and integrate each of those dimensions whilst interconnecting each area and when gauging their social return on investment.
SDGs and the Impact Plan
In February 2023, PensionBee launched its Impact Plan, which seeks to deliver long-term total returns by investing in a globally-diversified portfolio of 200-300 publicly-listed companies. The core products and/ or services of the companies in the Impact Plan are addressing some of the world’s major social and environmental challenges and advancing the SDGs and targets, whilst also helping those who invest in it to save for a happy retirement.
One of the Impact Plan’s core characteristics is intentionality. This means the companies in the plan are intending to generate positive and measurable social and environmental impact alongside a financial return. To help meet this characteristic, every company in the plan must show that more than 50% of its revenue or business activity is, and must continue, contributing to a social or environmental benefit or advancing one or more of the SDGs and impact themes.
SDGs and the Climate Plan
Coming in 2025, PensionBee’s Climate Plan is designed to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 through an accelerated decarbonisation strategy. The plan’s objective is to align with the goals of the Paris Agreement to keep the rise in global surface temperature well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels. Any companies who negatively impact or hinder the progress of environmental UN SDGs are excluded from the investment portfolio.
SDGs and PensionBee
We believe that incorporating ESG factors into PensionBee’s business is important to help reach long-term sustainability. In 2022 we conducted our first ever ESG Materiality Assessment, which has given us deeper insights into the ESG themes of most importance to our stakeholders and enabled us to prioritise our ESG work. It’s also helped us to consider where we have the biggest opportunity to contribute to the SDGs.
We’ve mapped our ESG materiality assessment to the SDGs that are most relevant for our business and stakeholders amongst our top ranked material topics. Those SDGs are:
- SDG 1. No poverty
- SDG 3. Good health and Wwllbeing
- SDG 4. Quality education
- SDG 5. Gender equality
- SDG 7. Affordable and clean energy
- SDG 8. Decent work and economic growth
- SDG 9. Industry, innovation and infrastructure
- SDG 10. Reduced inequalities
- SGD 13. Climate action.
PensionBee views all UN SDGs as highly interrelated and recognises many of our material topics are connected to additional SDGs.
Risk warning
As always with investments, your capital is at risk. The value of your investment can go down as well as up, and you may get back less than you invest. Anything discussed on the podcast should not be regarded as financial advice.
