Summary

2,000 companies will make or break progress towards the SDGs, per World Benchmarking Alliance

Anna Triponel

January 20, 2020

The World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA) has identified 2,000 companies as “‘keystone companies‘ that will have disproportionate influence on industry’s collective chance of success for meeting” the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These companies collectively make up half of the entire global economy and are responsible for $43 trillion in revenue. In short, without their committed actions, we face an unsustainable future, with the UN SDGs remaining unmet.

These 2,000 companies are the ones with the most impact and influence within industries that can positively and/or negatively impact one (or several) of the following seven transformations needed to meet the UN SDGs: social, food and agriculture, decarbonisation and energy, circular, digital, urban and financial. Companies on this list will be benchmarked by the WBA to see whether and how they are performing in line with sustainability expectations and in relation to their peers.

"Without these companies aligning their business models and operations with the SDGs – they simply won’t be delivered."                      

Gerbrand Haverkamp, Executive Director, World Benchmarking Alliance, Tick tock, tick tock….Happy new year and here’s to a new decade (World Benchmarking Alliance, January 2020)

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