Improving Communication from the UN to the Business Sector : How information about sustainability engagements can be customized in order to facilitate businesses’ investment decisions

Abstract: In an attempt to solve prevailing sustainability issues, the member states of the United Nations have established the High Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (UN HLPF), with the mandate to provide political guidance on sustainable development. The forum aims to strengthen the science-policy interface, SPI, by assembling diverse information and evaluations in the form of scientific briefs, which will be included in the Global Sustainable Development Report (GSDR 2015). The UN HLPF intends to enforce their influence on external stakeholders that have the capability to further develop and invest in suggested sustainability projects.   In this thesis, the authors focus on the business sector as external stakeholder and a case study is performed on businesses within the Swedish Haga Initiative. Businesses put pressure on policymakers in sustainability matters, and therefore the business sector could play an important role in improving the science-policy interface. The thesis includes an empirical study consisting of four deep interviews conducted with Chief Green Officers, CGOs, from four businesses in different sectors. To enable a comprehensive analysis of the results, the authors also conducted interviews with VINNOVA and 2050 - two stakeholders that have insight in the process of decision-making on sustainability projects within businesses. Furthermore, the authors attended a seminar in the Swedish parliament to obtain more input on the role of businesses as key stakeholders for sustainable development.   The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how communication of assessed scientific briefs to the business sector could be improved. This must be done in order for the UN HLPF to better serve its purpose as a tool to encourage and motivate external stakeholders to contribute in pursuing the Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs. The authors of this thesis aim to provide a suggestion for how the UN HLPF may approach the present issue of imperfect communication to the business sector. By identifying aspects of the information that businesses regard as important, and by highlighting these aspects in the communicated information about sustainability engagements, the businesses’ investment-decisions are facilitated. This makes way for larger contributions to achieving a sustainable development.   The authors suggest that the following five aspects are taken into consideration by the UN when communicating assessed scientific briefs to businesses; Aspect 1: Geographical Area, Aspect 2: Effect of the Sustainability Engagement, Aspect 3: Involvement of Other Businesses and Organizations, Aspect 4: Connection to SDGs, Aspect 5: Industry-Specific Information.   By highlighting these aspects in the communication of the scientific briefs, the UN HLPF can improve communication to businesses and thereby strengthen their influence on businesses, which in turn can help improve the science-policy interface.