Date of event: 7 June 2017

Location: Leeds Beckett University.

Event description:

The proceedings began with a presentation of several short films produced by Project Everyone to help raise awareness of the Sustainable Development Goals. The films can be found here.

Making Global Goals Local Business – Leeds was then formally opened by Professor Simon Robinson, Leeds Beckett University. After a brief description of the University’s wide ranging interests in sustainability and introducing the speakers, he handed off to Steve Kenzie, Executive Director, UN Global Compact Network UK who also welcomed attendees. Steve presented some information about the SDGs Roadshow and why it had been undertaken, including a Eurobarometer survey that looked at awareness of the SDGs across Europe and found it was lowest in the UK. He also introduced attendees to the UN Global Compact, the world’s largest corporate sustainability initiative.

After the welcome session, Steve Kenzie began the main event with a presentation on What are the SDGs? He gave a brief account of how the Goals came into being and an overview of the Goals. He then did a deep dive into Goal 2 to demonstrate their scope and richness. Steve Kenzie’s slides are available here.

The next speakers were Professor John Sturges, Climate, Environment, Buildings & Energy, Leeds Beckett University and Dr David Glew, Senior Research Fellow, Leeds Sustainability Institute. They spoke about the work of Leeds Sustainability Institute, a research center with expertise in many different areas (e.g. energy, infrastructures, etc.) providing consultancy and business services. Their slides are available here.

Next up, Chris Griffiths, SuDS Marketing Development Manager, Marshalls plc gave the keynote speech. He spoke about the actions that Marshalls has taken to achieve the SDGs and explained how these goals represent a business opportunity for them. Chris Griffiths’s slides are available here.

The event continued with a panel discussion on How can business get involved? with Chris Griffiths, Professor John Sturges, Dr David Glew, Antony Wallis, Regional Director of Business in the Community and Maddie Andrews, Student Union, Leeds Beckett University.  During this session participants asked questions to the speakers and expressed their views on the Global Goals. Much of the discussion centred on the challenge of getting issues of sustainability into schools.

Further resources:

• Download a .pdf 2-pager listing all the SDG targets here.
• More details on the Global Goals can be found here.

For further information please contact the UK Network Secretariat: secretariat@unglobalcompact.org.uk

This SDG Roadshow event was supported by: