The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) recently published the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Impact Standards for bond issuers (Version 1.0). The new Standards are already being piloted in the market with New Development Bank’s SDG bond issuance in China Interbank Bond Market in March 2021. The bank announced an SGD bond of approximately 750 million dollars, using the SDG Impact Standards and SDG Finance Taxonomy (China) developed by UNDP.
The SDG Impact Standards are practice standards, revolving around internal decision-making, designed to transform how enterprises and investors think about value creation, and integrate impact management and contributing positively to the SDGs in their strategy, management approach, disclosure, and governance practices. All Enterprises can use the Standards, no matter their size, geography, stakeholders or sector.
SDG Impact initiative aims to catalyze investment to achieve the SDGs by year 2030 through three key pillars:
• SDG Impact Management: comprising Standards for Private Equity Fund, Bond Issuers and Enterprises, an assurance framework and SDG Impact Seal and impact management education.
• SDG Impact Intelligence: comprising SDG investor maps of investable opportunity areas and business models via a searchable desktop platform. Examples of Investment Opportunity Areas identified in SDG Investor Maps include Atlantic Forest Restoration (Brazil) and Supporting SME’s credit access (Colombia).
• SDG Impact Facilitation: focusing on investor and policy dialogues drawing on UNDP’s presence in over 170 countries, deep sustainable development expertise and relationships with governments and other influencers
Complementary SDG Impact tools are being developed, including guidance, a glossary, assurance protocols and training for different actors across the investment and capital spectrum. UNDP also collaborated with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to develop Impact Standards for Financing Sustainable Development (IS-FSD) to help private sector partners deploy public capital.