The annual funding shortfall for the Sustainable Development Goals exceeds $4 trillion

Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week brought together leaders from the government, business and philanthropic sectors to stress the importance of coordinated, focused and thoughtful work methodologies to achieve goals quickly, effectively and on the broadest scale, especially with the intensification of difficulties hindering global efforts dedicated to addressing the challenges of sustainability and development.

As part of the week’s agenda, the UAE’s Special Envoy for Business and Philanthropy, Badr Jaafar, interacted with actor, film producer, environmental activist, and United Nations Goodwill Ambassador Adrian Grenier, during an opening discussion session entitled “The Power of Common Purpose: Mobilizing Capital, Voices, and Visions,” which discussed different ways to provide capital, lead initiatives, and raise awareness, and how to coordinate them to achieve effective results that accelerate progress toward sustainability, climate, and development priorities.

During this discussion, Badr Jaafar stressed that despite the abundance of capital globally, the impact of these resources remains limited due to the diversity of efforts, their inconsistency, conflicting incentives, and slow coordination, pointing to the strong impact that can be achieved from charitable funds if they are used strategically, and their ability to accelerate results by removing early risks, facilitating experimental procedures, and expanding the scope of cooperation between the public and private sectors.

In this regard, Badr Jaafar said: “Cooperation in implementation is the approach adopted by the UAE, based on a model that brings together sectors and groups of society as a whole under the guidance of thoughtful policies, in which markets and businesses play a pivotal role in providing capabilities and wide spread, and is supported by directed capital that removes risks from innovation, all in cooperation with societies that sustain the momentum and continuity of results. This comprehensive methodology is formulated in a way that ensures speed and effectiveness of implementation and harmony of partners’ efforts towards common goals. Thanks to the flexibility of our systems and our leadership. “With a strong field of artificial intelligence and a strong culture of cooperation between government and business, the UAE provides a practical platform to innovate, expand and adapt solutions to suit the local and global context as well.”

According to United Nations estimates, the annual funding shortfall for the Sustainable Development Goals now exceeds $4 trillion, which confirms the urgent need for business models that do not stop at theoretical commitments and plans, but rather move towards implementation and tangible results.

The discussion highlighted that this consensus is very necessary to move from dispersed initiatives to coordinated and systematic endeavors, and pointed out the necessity of evaluating investment returns when financing sustainability and development goals. The two speakers stressed the importance of rejecting the financial mentality that focuses exclusively on achieving immediate financial returns, and targeting sustainable values ​​in the long term that combine financial sustainability with a measurable social and environmental impact.

The two speakers emphasized that these models are not intended to be unified solutions that are applied as they are, but rather examples of the speed and effectiveness that can be achieved when trust, cooperation, and responsible supervision at work come together. They explained that expanding the scope of results does not depend on following a unified template, but rather on flexibility that allows the models to be adapted to local requirements and within the framework of common results.
Badr Jaafar highlighted the UAE’s leadership in the field of artificial intelligence, its growth as a center for strategic charitable work, and its growing importance as a platform for cooperation in comprehensive, flexible and advanced solutions.

He stressed the need to align innovation, capital and governance to ensure that AI solutions are implemented in a responsible manner that meets social needs.

Global economic analyzes show that the effective application of smart innovations across economies and public services could contribute to trillions of dollars in economic benefits in the next ten years, especially if these innovations are used in forecasting, setting goals and making decisions.

During this session, the importance of cooperation was repeatedly mentioned as an essential and indispensable requirement for accelerating and scaling up results. Commenting on this, Badr Jaafar said: “Consensus and harmonization – not shortcuts – are the way to accelerate results. When governments, businesses, investors and communities agree on specific, clear, measurable goals, money moves more quickly and on a larger scale.”

The discussion concluded by talking about the principles necessary to accelerate implementation, provided that cooperative initiatives are always based on trust, consensus, and long-term commitment.