The Trillion Dollar Shift: Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals; Business for Good is Good Business, reviewed

By @SimonCocking review of The Trillion Dollar Shift: Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals; Business for Good is Good Business. Available from Amazon here. See more reviews here.

Winner of the Gold Axiom Business Book Award 2019 in the Philanthropy / Non Profit / Sustainability category.

Over the past 30 years, the world has seen great social improvements. Technology has been developing at an enormous pace and is helping to solve our most pressing social and environmental challenges. Yet, despite this success, our current model of development is still deeply problematic. Natural disasters triggered by climate change have doubled since the 1980s, violence and armed conflict now cost more than 13 percent of GDP.

Social inequality and youth unemployment is worsening around the world, and climate change threatens the global population with tremendous environmental as well as social problems. Using the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals as a framework, this book sets out how business and capital now have a real opportunity to help resolve these problems.

With clear and plentiful examples and cases of how businesses are making a difference, relevant facts and figures to support the cases, and inspiring and instructional information on how businesses can create sustainable value, this highly readable book is a must-read for businesses (large and small) that wish to genuinely support the delivery of the SDGs.

The Paris Climate Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) drive change and offer a narrative and an opportunity to all to speak in one language on sustainability. They provide us with a clear set of targets for 2030. Through following the SDGs, opportunities abound for business and capital to unlock markets which offer endless potential for profit while at the same time working towards the Sustainable Development Goals. This book illustrates for business how to make the much-needed Trillion Dollar Shift.

Things are moving quickly. From global warming to #climatechange it is now increasingly being called #climateemergency as the time to do something to remedy the situation becomes shorter and shorter. We are potentially sailing into a difficult and challenging future if we can not turn around our CO2 emissions and many many other negative environmental practices. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals identified by the United Nations aim to provide the structure for how we, and companies and countries and communities can help to try and achieve a better and more livable planet for ourselves.

Marga Hoek’s book is a great compendium which explains in more detail why it makes sense for us to embrace these 17 SDGs as soon as possible, and why it is important for our own survival. Through out the book there are a series of concise case studies from various well known multinationals. These is both potentially inspiring, if they are actually serious about their actions but also a source of concern if it is only the latest in what has been a series of greenwashing by many of these companies in the past.

As the Chinese expression continues to demonstrate, we live in interesting times, both highly critical to our own survival and potentially, also the harbinger of a new, more sustainable way of living. As many are saying, we have no planet B, so we really need to achieve these changes quickly. If this guide helps to educate, inspire and motivate companies to deliver what needs to be done then we will all be thankful.

The call to business and capital, from business and capital https://t.co/qyMuKB6eyv via @GreenBiz

— Marga Hoek (@margahoek) July 18, 2019

More information about Irish Tech News and the Business Showcase

FYI the ROI for you is => Irish Tech News now get over 1.5 million monthly views, and up to 900k monthly unique visitors, from over 160 countries. We have over 860,000 relevant followers on Twitter on our various accounts & were recently described as Ireland’s leading online tech news site and Ireland’s answer to TechCrunch, so we can offer you a good audience!

Since introducing desktop notifications a short time ago, which notify readers directly in their browser of new articles being published, over 16000 people have now signed up to receive them ensuring they are instantly kept up to date on all our latest content. Desktop notifications offer a unique method of serving content directly to verified readers and bypass the issue of content getting lost in people’s crowded news feeds.

Drop us a line if you want to be featured, guest post, suggest a possible interview, or just let us know what you would like to see more of in our future articles. We’re always open to new and interesting suggestions for informative and different articles. Contact us, by email, twitter or whatever social media works for you.

Home

If you would like to have your company featured in the Irish Tech News Business Showcase, get in contact with us at [email protected] or on Twitter: @SimonCocking