Governments and the UN system have an enormous responsibility in overseeing the achievements of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). But they cannot accomplish the task alone. Complexity and urgency of SDGs require new approaches that would literally mobilise every sector and level of society.
The engagement of private philanthropic entities for social enterprises can significantly boost a country's capacity to achieve the 17 ambitious goals collectively known as the Sustainable Development Goals. A close collaboration between the public and private sectors, including non-governmental organisations (NGOs) is needed to carefully plan the development interventions, fix priorities, allocate resources and monitor the results.
The SDGs reflect our contemporary understanding that social, economic and environmental issues cannot be clearly divided. The issues are intertwined at the global level as well as household level. Therefore, the implementation of SDGs, as argued by some, "is not the responsibility of governments alone, but nations, which necessitates the participation of all relevant stakeholders."
As per various estimates, US$ 5.0 to 11 trillion a year will be needed to achieve SDGs and similar global goals. Philanthropic foundations, which hold literally trillions of US dollars for social investment, can be an important, if not the largest, source of funding. However, more importantly, these foundations and their partner NGOs represent flexibility and deeper ties to local communities which, in conjunction with government initiatives, can trigger transformative changes at the grassroots level. Effective Government-NGO engagement in different stages of policy design, implementation, follow-up phase and evaluation can be a major catalyst for SDG implementation.
Foundations, venture philanthropic initiatives and impact investments could be effective partners in traditional public endeavours in terms of funding and embedding social impacts in them. China and India are the two countries which have already made significant progress in attracting funding for social enterprises. They are aggressively moving forward with ambition of becoming champions in this field. The spectacular growth of business management firms for facilitating communication between social enterprises and fund providers, capacity development of social enterprises, marketing of the ideas of social investments and so on is strong indication of the huge opportunity for social enterprises --- especially in Asia. Other Asian countries (e.g. South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Indonesia) have already developed policy frameworks for social enterprises.
If emerging economies like China, India, Brazil and the Philippines can join the race to be eligible for getting foundation funds, then there is no reason why Bangladesh cannot benefit from this funding. After all, we have an enviable track record of individual and group initiatives in tackling economic, social and environmental problems with innovative ideas. Several philanthropies, including the Bill Gates and Melinda Gates Foundation, are already financing many projects/programmes in Bangladesh. Bill Gates and Melinda Gates Foundation is, for example, one of the core sponsors of BRAC's BKash initiative on mobile banking.
Experience of home-grown social enterprises established with local fund is very encouraging. BRAC, for example, is working as a social enterprise with significant turnover from banking, dairy and clothing industry. Impact investment is also taking place and more prospects are being created in this area. The 'State of Social Enterprise in Bangladesh' a survey report launched by the British Council last week, is a good source of updates on social enterprises in Bangladesh.
Very recently I represented Bangladesh in Asian Venture Philanthropy Network conference. During the conference, I had a chance to discuss the prospect of broad-based participation to implement SDGs in countries like Bangladesh with many of the 620 participants representing 33 countries including 18 government delegations. In fact, we as a country is ready to greatly benefit from leveraging the vast resources and experience that are available with these philanthropic foundations. It appeared clear to me that local NGOs need to improve their project development and management capacity, governance structure, fiduciary standard, grievance redressal system, robust reporting system and human resources with priority to innovative mind sets.
From public policy angle, we need policy and legal framework for promoting the social enterprises. Currently, there is no policy framework on social enterprise: there is no barrier either for Social Purpose Organisations (SPOs) to operate as 'for profit' organisations. While, one might argue that rushing to a policy framework might stifle the potential of organic growth of the sector, but some form of recognition and guidelines might be helpful. In fact, we can learn lessons from policy frameworks of countries such as South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia, etc. who actually incentivise social enterprises by allocating public resources.
For this to happen, a lead agency needs to be identified to spell out, through policy discourse, the issues of social enterprises and develop the related legal and policy framework. Finally, the identified agency needs to engage local and international stakeholders to mobilize resources, technical capability and monitor impacts of social enterprises.
Most importantly, though we are at the first year of SDG implementation, Bangladesh needs to move fast- not only to just compete with the rest of the contenders and but to lead in the area of innovative development solutions.
The writer is the Director General of NGO Affairs Bureau.
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