Geneva, 26 April 2019: IPIECA, the global oil and gas industry association for advancing environmental and social performance, and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) have agreed to collaborate around efforts to develop an SDG Sector Roadmap for the oil and gas industry.
This initiative will seek to bring leading representatives from the sector together to explore, articulate and realize the potential of the oil and gas industry to contribute to the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The final Roadmap, which will be jointly developed by IPIECA and WBCSD, will be launched in the summer of 2020.
The roadmap has the support of and will incorporate key inputs from WBCSD and IPIECA member companies.
Through its SDG Sector Roadmap project, WBCSD looks to support its member companies and the wider business community in developing robust SDG roadmaps to help guide and inspire entire sectors as they seek to optimize their contributions to the SDGs. This work builds off recommendations from the Business and Sustainable Development Commission’s landmark Better Business Better World report which underlined the importance of roadmaps as a tool to help guide sectoral shifts to sustainable development in line with the SDGs. In 2018 WBCSD elaborated on this concept by publishing freely available guidelines providing a detailed methodology for how companies within a given industry can come together and explore their collective potential to advance the SDG agenda.
The oil and gas sector SDG roadmap project will leverage these guidelines as well as WBCSD’s recent experience in the production of SDG sector roadmaps for a number of other industry groups including the chemical sector and the forest sector. It will also build on work that has already been undertaken by IPIECA, including the publication of its 2017 report Mapping the oil and gas industry to the Sustainable Development Goals: An Atlas.
Peter Bakker, President and CEO of WBCSD: “The SDGs have the potential to unleash innovation, economic growth, and systems transformation at an unprecedented scale. They also represent a significant market opportunity for business. However, the fact is that the ambitions of the Goals are beyond the reach of any company in isolation; instead they call for coordination and collective efforts from entire industry sectors.”
“Our SDG Sector Roadmap model will help the oil and gas industry to develop a common understanding of how they can contribute to the achievement of the SDGs and to establish a collective pathway to accelerate and optimize that level of contribution on the road to 2030. This in turn helps the sector to collectively strengthen its license to operate, manage operational and regulatory risks, and open up growth markets. We are glad we can work with IPIECA to accomplish this.”
Brian Sullivan, Executive Director IPIECA: “As a key pillar of the global energy system, the oil and gas industry is, and will continue to be a driver of economic and social development. We are excited to work with WBCSD and see this as a key next step, building on our work with the United Nations Development Programme and the International Finance Corporation in the Mapping the oil and gas industry to the Sustainable Development Goals: An Atlas, to create a pathway for sustainable development in our sector.”
More information
James Gomme
Director, Sustainable Development Goals
WBCSD
Sophie Depraz
Programme and Communications Director
IPIECA
