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Global trends in impact investing revealed a remarkable growth in assets over the recent decade and is on an upward trajectory. It is a proven way of achieving positive social and environmental impact while reaping financial gains.
Closer to home, Temasek Trust has been a member of the global steering group for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) SDG Impact since May 2019. As SDG Impact’s anchor partner in Asia, Temasek Trust supports its efforts to help businesses and investors put sustainability at the core of management.
In May 2021, SDG Impact and Temasek Trust launched a collaboration to break through the next frontier of awareness, adoption, and utilisation of SDG Impact’s tools and intelligence in the ASEAN region. By leveraging UNDP’s role as the steward of the UN SDGs, coupled with its on-the-ground presence across Asia as well as Temasek Trust’s networks, the collaboration aims to enhance the private sector’s contribution to improve the long-term well-being of communities and the environment in Southeast Asia.
The collaboration enables support to be directed to ASEAN countries through SDG Impact’s two key pillars of work. The first being the SDG Impact Standards and the upcoming SDG Impact Assurance Framework and SDG Impact Seal. The second is the SDG Investor Maps, a market intelligence tool which seeks to direct capital to the emerging markets where underfunded SDGs, government policy and market opportunity meet.
The SDG Impact Standards for Private Equity (PE), Bonds, Enterprises and the OECD-UNDP Impact Standards for Financing Sustainable Development are all now available. Further, the Guidelines for the SDG Impact Standards for Enterprises have also recently been published, while the Guidelines for each of the other Standards are currently in production. Organisations may now also use SDG Impact’s Self-Assessment Tool to discover where they are in their journey to embedding sustainability throughout their operations.
To support the adoption of the SDG Impact Standards, Impact Measurement & Management (IMM) training was conducted for the UNDP Country Office in the region. SDG Impact and CASE at Duke University also rolled out its foundational online training course, Impact Measurement and Management for the SDGs, available free on Coursera (http://immforsdgs.com/). The course has gained thousands of subscribers in the first few months of launching, an encouraging sign that businesses and investors are taking sustainability seriously.
There has been significant progress on the forthcoming SDG Impact Assurance Framework and SDG Impact Seal which is expected to launch in 2022. ABC World Asia, our private equity impact fund paving the way for impact investing in the region, is working with SDG Impact to pilot this process.
The partnership also enables SDG Impact to accelerate the development of the SDG Investor Maps which can benefit ASEAN countries. We are pleased to share that the first SDG Investor Map for Indonesia will soon be completed, and most other ASEAN countries have also factored SDG Investor Map development into their strategies. Further, the partnership also enables the SDG Investor Maps to be tested and reviewed to ensure improvements are made wherever necessary, in order to craft a robust product with significant buy-in from relevant stakeholders.
The SDG Impact’s Standards and SDG Investor Maps can be found on the interactive SDG Investor Platform, which was launched by UNDP and Global Investors for Sustainable Development Alliance in April 2021. It hosts 250+ of sectoral opportunities and business models across 17 emerging markets. We look forward to contributing ASEAN-focused resources to this Platform, working with partners to organise investor meetings to share the SDG Investor Maps, foster matchmaking, and unveil more opportunities for impact investors.
We are optimistic that the successful implementation of activities under this collaboration will advance the SDGs and secure the well-being of communities and planet in the long run. We look forward to a bright future in partnership with UNDP SDG Impact and we hope that our joint efforts will support sustainable development in Asia.
