UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) Policy Briefs

Digital transformation, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, is enabling new forms of work and new ways of organizing work. Yet, due to regulatory gaps, social protection gaps, and weak enforcement mechanisms, many workers in these new forms of work - especially in the platform economy - may be pushed into precarious employment. Labour regulations should be updated to balance flexibility with the safeguarding of labour standards, workers’ protection, and income security in the digital age. This requires a shift away from one-size fits-all solutions to tailor-made employment and social protection policies that consider the unique opportunities and challenges of different types of new forms of work, based on better data and careful examination of the impacts of digitally enabled forms of work on society and the economy. Social protection systems need to adapt to ensure no worker is left unprotected in a future world of work transformed by digital technology.

This policy brief reviews trends and impacts of wildfires on sustainable development, in all its environmental, economic and social dimensions. It provides an analysis of the key drivers of wildfires and proposes measures to reduce the risk and impacts of future wildfires.

Achieving sustainable development requires determined actions to revamp production and consumption patterns, creating a resource-efficient and resilient post-pandemic recovery. The notion of the circular economy facilitates greater level of social and environmental sustainability, by emphasizing the vision of an economic system that designs out waste and pollution, keeps products and martials in use and recognizes the residual value in natural resources and post-consumption waste, to regenerate the natural system. Cooperatives and other enterprises of the Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) are recognized as taking a leading role in incorporating the circular economic model into their businesses and communities. More supportive measures from governments are needed to strength their contribution to accelerated progress towards the goals of the 2030 Agenda. Continued efforts to improve statistical information on the circular economy, cooperatives and the wider SSE will help inform policy-making and facilitate transition to sustainable production and consumption.

Universally accessible social protection programmes play a vital role in overcoming poverty and inequality over the life course. Rural populations face financial, administrative and programme design barriers to accessing social protection. Government action is required to ensure social protection measures, including floors, are available for all in rural areas.

The strengthening of institutions and incentives such as water user associations and secure water and tenure rights, along with enhanced international cooperation, can spur greater application of circular approaches in agriculture.

Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 17 recognizes the importance of multi-stakeholder partnerships (MSPs) as part of the means of implementation to achieve the 2030 Agenda. MSPs can be powerful mechanisms to achieve the SDGs, as they can bring to bear a range of different levers from diverse societal sectors, including human and financial resources, technologies, and knowledge. More recently, multi-stakeholder collaboration has proven to be critical to tackle the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic and will be essential in the recovery efforts to ‘build back better’ towards more sustainable, resilient and inclusive societies. To support effective partnership building, an enabling partnership ecosystem is required at all levels, including policies and standards that support multi-stakeholder inclusion and collaboration, ensuring that all relevant stakeholders have the necessary knowledge and capacities for partnership creation, and fostering inclusive partnership platforms. Partnership platforms can be particularly effective catalyzers of new and transformative partnerships at all levels as they can serve to mobilize key sectors and stakeholders around joint action and provide coherence and coordination, including alignment of investments for SDG implementation.

Climate change, deforestation, pollution, development and loss of diversity are serious threats to indigenous peoples due to their dependence on the environment and the resources of the lands and territories. It causes the loss of traditional knowledge, disintegrating traditional governance structures and their cultures. This policy briefing provides examples of the holistic perspective of indigenous peoples on resource governance, land rights, mitigation of climate change impact on their environment and resilience-building through the use of their traditional knowledge. It also highlights the benefit of indigenous peoples' full participation, in particular, indigenous women in decision-making processes to prevent conflict. It notes the importance of upholding the rights of indigenous peoples as enshrined in international law and full respect for the right of indigenous peoples decision to not to engage in the global economy. Further, it points to the need to promote dialogue among indigenous peoples, local communities, scientists, including meteorologists and climate experts, policymakers and other relevant actors, to enable co-production of knowledge, and sharing of sustainable strategies to overcome risks and strengthen resilience to climate change.

Business and financials models must be rethought to accelerate and strengthen business’ contributions to sustainable development. Confusion still prevails over the framework companies should follow to provide sustainability-related information. Yet the transformation of the private sector cannot be achieved without more transparency on the impact of companies on the SDGs.

The decisions taken by institutional investors, commercial banks, capital market actors and corporations have a strong impact on the magnitude and quality of private investment available for the SDGs. To scale up available private finance and investment for sustainable development, it is necessary to address the incentives of the above actors through a combination of regulatory and institution/industry-specific measures. Further action is needed to better channel investment to countries and SDG-related sectors that are most in need. The development of innovative and scalable global platforms, instruments and funds would be an important first step in this regard. Additionally, to enhance the impact of given investment on sustainable development, and to avoid green or SDG-washing, it is necessary to advance industry-based standards for impact measurement and support the development and implementation of a clear set of SDG related metrics that can be integrated into existing reporting frameworks.