Contributor(s): Achim Steiner | UNDP’s Human Development Report regularly highlights the impacts of so-called ‘wicked problems’ of under-development, instability and conflict. Recent initiatives such as the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development and the SDG Investor Platform aim to encourage more business and investor contributions to tackling these problems and delivering the SDG Agenda. In this keynote lecture, the head of UNDP Achim Steiner argues that we need to step up multi-stakeholder co-operation and collective efforts to combat rising poverty and inequality, violence that particularly affects women and girls, and economic fragility, that are exacerbated by current crises like COVID-19 and climate change.

The lecture will mark the launch of the LSE IDEAS report Maximising business contributions to sustainable development and positive peace. A human security approach. The report sets out what a human security approach means for business, and highlights issue areas such as information technology, impact investing and migration, where the private sector can make a difference through helping to build resilient communities and delivering the SDGs.