Achieving sustainable living across the world will require enormous ongoing effort. The UNDP Green Commodities Program is an exemplary case of successful collaboration between stakeholders to pursue the Sustainable Development Goals.

Sustainability is a global concern. Achieving sustainable living across the world will require enormous ongoing effort. In 2015, the United Nations adopted the ambitious Sustainable Development Goals (the SDGs) to be achieved by 2030. The goals include ending world hunger, normalising responsible consumption and production, and reducing inequalities. Achieving the SDGs would bring substantial social, economic and environmental benefits.  Their attainment is also vital for avoiding both cynicism about global goals and even worse, goal burnout.

Effective collaboration is fundamental for pursuing the SDGs. It requires strategic savviness and focused initiative. This is where entrepreneurs represent a key resource. Entrepreneurs – be they working in markets, in and around government, or in communities – share the drive to overcome old organisational and institutional barriers, and to innovate. This will be necessary to achieve the SDGs.

The Green Commodities Program

Amid current efforts to achieve the SDGs, the Green Commodities Program (GCP) sponsored by the United Nations Development Program is an exemplary case. The GCP illustrates that sustainability is not just about imposing constraints on past actions and reveals how new markets can be developed that are consistent with the pursuit of multiple forms of sustainability. It also highlights how entrepreneurs drive change.

Launched in 2009, the GCP has been employed across multiple countries and targets multiple SDGs. The GCP is now active in 11 countries across Latin America, Asia, the Pacific and Africa, and aims to address the sustainability problems of producing agricultural commodities such as cocoa, palm oil, and pineapples. The program has four components: it brings together diverse stakeholders, supports national governments to strengthen laws, policies and enforcement systems, helps to improve farmer support systems, and expands financial incentives for sustainable commodity production.

The GCP is big. It aims in the coming years to improve the lives of eight million farmers and affects more than 20 million hectares of farmland. It is committed to gender equality and assisting governments to develop research-informed policies and follow best national farming practices. The GCP’s recognition that no single group can meet the challenges of sustainable development alone reminds us that even when entrepreneurial actors take the lead, complex problems require collaborative action.

Necessary conditions

Local changes will be necessary to support the attainment of the SDGs. The GCP, as a neutral broker, brings together diverse stakeholders to form National Commodity Platforms. The platforms formulate new approaches to making crucial commodities more sustainable. Stakeholders, including government officials, farmers, and companies, work together to remove impediments to a commodity’s sustainability. For example, Indonesia has had a National Commodity Platform for palm oil since 2014. As well as making palm oil production more sustainable, changes include promoting gender equality, improving the productivity and rights of small producers, and the conservation of forest habitat.

The GCP provides a link between the global SDGs and on-the-ground actions. Smallholder farms produce most of the world’s food but often use ineffective practices. The GCP works with banks to help farmers invest in their farms and move towards sustainable production.

Catalytic entrepreneurial actors are fundamental to goal attainment. While 800,000 small-scale farmers rely on cocoa as their main source of income, the cocoa industry has contributed to a high amount of deforestation. The GCP set up a program with the Ghana Cocoa Board and Mondelez International, the world’s biggest buyer of chocolate. The program’s aim is to rehabilitate cocoa landscape and forests, and incentivise sustainable practices. Working with a multitude of stakeholders to establish such a program takes commitment and energy and the willingness to keep working towards a larger goal. Various entrepreneurial actors have spearheaded this rehabilitation effort within and across Ghana’s local farming communities.

Potential resistance and opportunities

Conversations often benefit from inclusiveness. However, that same attribute can also make change difficult, as multiple parties want their interests represented in new organisational structures. To avoid resistance, the GCP acts as a neutral facilitator bringing together all the relevant stakeholders of an issue. The National Platform for the Responsible Production and Trade of Pineapples, launched in 2011, established a neutral multi-stakeholder and inter-institutional conversation between government, the private sector, and civil society, with 900 technical experts from 50 organisations and institutions in the pineapple sector coming together.

There is potential for political opportunities to emerge from successful chains of action. GCP demonstrates a working model that can protect the environment while also enhancing a country’s economy. Its success in bringing together all the stakeholders on an important issue, such as a nation’s main commodity, is a foundation on which future successful actions can be built. As it continues to improve the lives of people across the world, the GCP provides evidence that should attract other countries to come on board.

So, what can the GCP teach us about pursuing the SDGs? Most importantly, we see that goal attainment requires extensive collaboration. However, collaboration never happens by itself: sustained effort is needed to make collaboration successful. Energetic and strategically savvy individuals represent a key ingredient for successful collaboration.

Entrepreneurial individuals are currently working at the boundaries of markets, communities, and governments to promote innovative ways of doing things. The challenge is to find such actors at the local, national, and international level and work with them. Often, that will mean nurturing and encouraging new talent, showing people how they might emulate the entrepreneurial practices of others. Mentoring and instruction could promote real progress towards attaining the SDGs.

Michael Mintrom is a professor of Public Sector Management at Monash University.

Madeline Thomas is a research assistant in public policy at the Australia and New Zealand School of Government. 

Michael and Madeline have also published the journal article titled “Policy entrepreneurs and collaborative action: pursuit of the Sustainable Development Goals” on a similar topic, in Vol. 10, Issue 2 of the International Journal of Entrepreneurial Venturing. 

This article is published under a Creative Commons Licence and may be republished with attribution.