“Leave no one behind” is a fundamental element of achieving transformative societal change. People are at the heart of every aspect of our society and our economy, so there is no way to advance without ensuring peoples’ well-being—from respecting human rights, to creating inclusive economies and decent work, to putting communities at the center of environmental protection and climate action. The World Benchmarking Alliance points to three enablers for social transformation: 1) respecting human rights; 2) providing and promoting decent work; and 3) acting ethically – and will be assessing 2,000 companies on their performance against these enablers starting this year.
Social transformation is at the center of systems change
Non-profit organisation the World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA) has launched its Social Transformation framework which is the center of the system transformation model (more on this below). Social transformation “seeks to achieve universal human development by respecting human rights, promoting equality and empowering people to pursue the opportunities and choices they value.” The framework will form the basis of a new benchmark to assess what the SDG2000 (WBA’s list of the 2,000 most influential companies to achieve the SDGs) are doing to respect human rights and put people at the center of sustainable development.
System transformation is needed to achieve sustainable development
WBA “develops free and publicly available benchmarks that measure and incentivise company contributions towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).” In support of this objective WBA identified seven “system transformations” needed to achieve the SDGs, with social transformation at the center. The seven system transformations are:
- Social transformation
- Financial transformation
- Decarbonisation and energy transformation
- Food and agriculture transformation
- Digital transformation
- Urban transformation
- Circular transformation