Members of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) are increasingly working with the private sector in development co-operation to realise sustainable development outcomes. To learn from this experience, the DAC introduced a peer learning review on working with and through the private ...

Forty years since the first UN Conference on the Human Environment was held in Stockholm, how has the situation changed? We still have only one Earth but are we caring for and maintaining it? This book, written by leaders in the field, discusses the key environmental issues affecting the Earth today including atmospheric science, the marine environment, waste management and a specific chapter looking at changes in attitude to environmental issues. Aimed at policy makers, students, environmental scientists and thinkers, this title will be an important review bringing the reader right up to date with current opinions and attitudes.

Voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) and other private governance instruments (e.g., Fair Trade, Forest Stewardship Council, Fair Wear Foundation, GLOBALGAP) are increasingly regulating global production processes and economic activities. VSS verify the compliance of products or production processes with sustainability standards. The importance of voluntary sustainability standards is now widely recognized. After being operational for more than two decades, they have established themselves as private governance instruments. This recognition is also exemplified by their integration in public regulatory approaches. Governments and international organizations are partnering with voluntary sustainability standards to pursue sustainable development policies. We witness the integration of VSS in the regulatory approaches of local and national governments in countries around the world, the integration of VSS in trade policies, the emergence of public–private initiatives to govern global supply chains, and the inclusion of private initiatives in experimentalist governance regimes. This Special Issue seeks to bring together research on the interface between private and public governance. We welcome contributions which analyze specific case studies on the emergence and development of these private–public interactions, the design of public–private governance, the effectiveness of these governance arrangements, and critical perspectives on the possibilities and limitations of such public–private forms of governance. We welcome multi-disciplinary perspectives including contributions from economics, political science, law, sociology, geography, and anthropology. Papers selected for this Special Issue are subject to a peer review procedure with the aim of rapid and wide dissemination of research results, developments, and applications.

How can governments support the private sector’s contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? This book investigates the contribution of firms to the SDGs, particularly through their core business, taking into account inter-sectoral linkages and global value chains, using novel techniques and data sources.

This open access handbook analyses the role of development cooperation in achieving the 2030 Agenda in a global context of 'contested cooperation'. Development actors, including governments providing aid or South-South Cooperation, developing countries, and non-governmental actors (civil society, philanthropy, and businesses) constantly challenge underlying narratives and norms of development. The book explores how reconciling these differences fosters achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. Sachin Chaturvedi is Director General at the Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS), a New Delhi, India-based think tank. Heiner Janus is a researcher in the Inter- and Transnational Cooperation programme at the German Development Institute. Stephan Klingebiel is Chair of the Inter- and Transnational Cooperation programme at the German Development Institute and Senior Lecturer at the University of Marburg, Germany. Xiaoyun Li is Chair Professor at China Agricultural University and Honorary Dean of the China Institute for South-South Cooperation in Agriculture. Prof. Li is the Chair of the Network of Southern Think Tanks and Chair of the China International Development Research Network. André de Mello e Souza is a researcher at the Institute for Applied Economic Research (IPEA), a Brazilian governmental think tank. Elizabeth Sidiropoulos is Chief Executive of the South African Institute of International Affairs. She has co-edited Development Cooperation and Emerging Powers: New Partners or Old Patterns (2012) and Institutional Architecture and Development: Responses from Emerging Powers (2015). Dorothea Wehrmann is a researcher in the Inter- and Transnational Cooperation programme at the German Development Institute.

A positive agenda for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 All 193 member nations of the United Nations agreed in September 2015 to adopt a set of seventeen "Sustainable Development Goals," to be achieved by 2030. Each of the goals—in such areas as education and health care —is laudable in and of itself, and governments and organizations are working hard on them. But so far there is no overall, positive agenda of what new things need to be done to ensure the goals are achieved across all nations. In a search of fresh approaches to the longstanding problems targeted by the Sustainable Development Goals, the Japan International Cooperation Agency and the Global Economy and Development program at Brookings mounted a collaborative research effort to advance implementation of Agenda 2030. This edited volume is the product of that effort. The book approaches the UN's goals through three broad lenses. The first considers new approaches to capturing value. Examples include Nigeria's first green bonds, practical methods to expand women's economic opportunities, benchmarking to reflect business contributions to achieving the goals, new incentives for investment in infrastructure, and educational systems that promote cross-sector problem solving. The second lens entails new approaches to targeting places, including oceans, rural areas, fast-growing developing cities, and the interlocking challenge of data systems, including geospatial information generated by satellites. The third lens focuses on updating governance, broadly defined. Issues include how civil society can align with the SDG challenge; how an advanced economy like Canada can approach the goals at home and abroad; what needs to be done to foster new approaches for managing the global commons; and how can multilateral institutions for health and development finance evolve.

This open access book analyses the interplay of sustainable development and human rights from different perspectives including fight against poverty, health, gender equality, working conditions, climate change and the role of private actors. Each aspect is addressed from a more human rights-focused angle and a development-policy angle. This allows comparisons between the different approaches but also seeks to close gaps which would remain if only one perspective would be at the center of the discussions. Specifically, the book shows the strong connections between human rights and the objectives of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the United Nations in 2015. Already the preamble of this document explicitly states that "the 17 Sustainable Development Goals ... seek to realise the human rights of all". Moreover, several goals and targets of the 2030 Agenda correspond to already existing individual human rights obligations. The contributions of this volume therefore also address how the implementation of human rights and SDGs can reinforce each other, but also point to critical shortcomings of the different approaches.

This book explores conceptualizations of CSR and sustainability in the digital economy, focusing upon points of intersection between CSR and online communities. Reflecting on new areas of responsibility that organisations must face in a globalised economy, the contributions explore the ways CSR is being communicated, challenged and reshaped in a rapidly evolving online context. Up-to-date research from around the world shows how diverse communities, citizens and stakeholders are engaging with, and making demands on, organisations in novel ways that pay little respect to international borders. With online communities increasingly influencing the way in which business is carried out and perceived, the case studies explored here offer a useful indication of the variety of new developments and controversies that have emerged in the field of CSR. This book will appeal to postgraduate students and researchers of CSR and CSR communications, as well as communication, public relation and corporate responsibility practitioners.

This handbook provides an overview of the research on the changing nature of work and workers by marshalling interdisciplinary research to summarize the empirical evidence and provide documentation of what has actually changed. Connections are explored between the changing nature of work and macro-level trends in technological change, income inequality, global labor markets, labor unions, organizational forms, and skill polarization, among others. This edited volume also reviews evidence for changes in workers, including generational change (or lack thereof), that has accumulated across domains. Based on documented changes in work and worker behavior, the handbook derives implications for a range of management functions, such as selection, performance management, leadership, workplace ethics, and employee well-being. This evaluation of the extent of changes and their impact gives guidance on what best practices should be put in place to harness these developments to achieve success.

The intersection of business, peace and sustainable development is becoming an increasingly powerful space, and is already beginning to show the capability to drive major global change. This book deciphers how different forms of corporate engagement in the pursuit of peace and development have different impacts and outcomes. It looks specifically at how the private sector can better deliver peace contributions in fragile, violent and conflict settings and then at the deeper consequences of this agenda upon businesses, governments, international institutions and not least the local communities that are presumed to be the beneficiaries of such actions. It is the first book to compile the state-of-the-field in one place and is therefore an essential guide for students, researchers, policy-makers and practitioners on the role of business in peace. Without cross-disciplinary engagement, it is hard to identify where the cutting edge truly lies, and how to take the topic forward in a more systematic manner. This edited book brings together thought leaders in the field and pulls disparate strands together from business ethics, management, international relations, peace and conflict studies in order to better understand how businesses can contribute to peacebuilding and sustainable development. Before businesses take a deeper role in the most complicated and risky elements of sustainable development, we need to be able to better explain what works, why it works, and what effective business efforts for peace and development mean for the multilateral institutional frameworks. This book does just that.