The international community has adopted eight ambitious goals to be achieved by the year 2015. Both companies and development organizations are eager to have an instrument that measures the contribution of the private sector to goals like improving maternal health, reducing child mortality, combating hunger, diseases and illiteracy, and ensuring environmental sustainability. The MDG-scan, developed and tested by Dutch Sustainability Research (DSR), seems to be a promising tool that delivers quantitative results. Besides, it measures both the positive and the negative impact of the private sector on the MDGs.
The multinationals that participated in the testing phase of the scan represent different sectors: Philips (electronics), Heineken (beer), ABN AMRO (banking), TNT (logistics), BHP Billiton (mining) and Akzo Nobel (chemicals). All of them appeared to contribute to at least some of the MDGs. In itself this is not surprising, since these companies are known for making an effort to embed corporate social responsibility in the way they run their business. What does make the results interesting is that they inspire the companies to redirect their energy and money in order to enhance the impact.
Managing director of DSR, Ronald Lubberts, told P+: "The six multinationals that tried the experimental version made a lot of suggestions for improvement. They want to have a sharp focus on actual results. We are processing these comments now. Then we will bring the scan online, so companies can make their own assessment. We will surely encourage them to use this tool."
Commissioner of the MDG-scan is the Dutch Committee for International Cooperation and Sustainable Development (NCDO). Its ambition is to bring the MDGs to mainstream financial markets by benchmarking sufficient companies to launch an Index, followed by a Millennium Development Fund. This fund will include the stocks of companies with the best MDG-performance.
There is already a download available of the new MDG-instrument, awaiting the online tool.
P+ webtip: New MDG-scan (see download)