 Big point of this agenda has of course been that it's an agenda for all not just government so Chris West will tell us about the role of business and more particularly the role of business in measuring and reporting Yes, thank you very much. Also So as also says I'll be talking primarily about the measurement processes that businesses undertake and how they might relate and assist with the measurement of the SDGs But I want to start by considering why we care about business in this context and there are very important Reasons why we care about business in sustainable development not least the fact that they underpin Economic growth and economic development. They are also large international employers, of course and throughout the employment within the communities in which they work they have Training programs education programs that assist in the development of those communities There are also resource consumers and resource producers and those that resource consumption Has impacts both to the society and to environmental issues But they also influence policy and the influence politics and therefore the legislation regulations policies that emerge from national and international level implementation of the SDGs Will have been influenced in some way by business considerations Why do we why would business care about sustainable development? Again those legislation regulation policies that come out of the SDG process will have an impact either indirectly or directly on business operations There's a reputational issue of not engaging with these issues stakeholders such as Consumers shareholders and investors are increasingly looking at business to provide evidence that they're engaging in these programs There's also risks associated with inaction more widely. So resource constraints that might emerge from Not dealing and responding to natural disasters social unrest leading to employment and Labor problems which are important for businesses to understand and consider But there are also opportunities in the business sector as well that come with sustainable development new markets that open up new opportunities for technology and innovation So there are very clear reasons why we should be engaging More fully with businesses in this agenda and has also suggested earlier the MDGs the outgoing Millennium Development Goals Have been widely criticized for a lack of engagement with the business community So one area where businesses I think can play a role is in the measurement and monitoring Processes that will be important at the SDG level for understanding where we are making progress Where we've had successes and we're also where we're failing to make progress and the business community has a large and long history of collecting data developing new methods and disseminating that information to greater or lesser degrees Through a variety of different national and international frameworks These can be public focused or they could be information and surveys being passed to national statistics offices or to shareholders and investors And the question that emerges here is can we tap into some of these expertise and some of this data to help us support? our monitoring efforts at national and international levels as Mon's highlighted the SDGs have broadened in scope and these frameworks cover a triple bottom line of social economic and Environmental issues so at the broad level there should be compatibility between the systems that are already being used by business and The aspirations of the sustainable development goals But there's also an opportunity or a danger here that some of these frameworks that already embedded within business culture Are misaligned with the aspirations of the SDGs? And if the things the businesses are currently measuring measuring are not aligned with our aspirations and monitoring processes at the SDG level Actions by business may diverge from the actions we want to take at the international and national level and may even conflict with the ambitions of sustainable development and This misalignment problem is something we've been looking at quite closely in a project called measure what matters to which SEI has been a key contributor Particularly looking across the scales of business reporting and measurement frameworks national and government frameworks for measuring and monitoring progress and the targets and goals of the SDGs Looking across a range of development issues to see where these misalignments or potential Realignments might occur and one example that we've looked at for instance is India the country of India and Water sustainability So we've broken down the elements of water sustainability into the different types of Reporting and indicator sets that are being used across the different aspects of sustainability in water And we compared in India the frameworks that businesses are using To monitor these things from their own framework of their own contexts The aspects of water sustainability that are covered in the national frameworks that are being used in India And then how these align with the targets and goals that are currently being discussed and proposed within the SDGs And some quite interesting findings emerge So for example water access access to clean water and sanitation It probably won't surprise many of you to know that this is the key still the key priority within The water considerations in the sustainable development goals It's an important issue as well at the national level in India But if we look at the types of reporting that are going along in the business sectors within India We don't see much mention and we don't see much formalization of the problem of water access in the community within those business discussions and those business measurements That's clearly an important issue because businesses have a clear role to play both in potentially providing infrastructure For the communities in which they operate, but also acting as a key competitor for those resources So a question that emerges from this type of analysis is what can we do better to make sure that issues such as water access in the community Are prioritized at a business level? How can we encourage measurement of the impacts of business on access and how might we use that data to monitor progress more generally? other areas in which Questions can be raised when we talk about interaction with business is how do we incentivize businesses to become more transparent? We know that a lot of data exists and we know a lot of data will be useful in those measurement processes at national levels There are methods being developed by business which are rather closed source and data which is intransparent That's for variety of reasons including confidentiality and competitive advantage that sort of thing But do we need to look new legislation here mandatory reporting or can we just promote dialogue and information sharing that way? There's also a question of how we broaden engagement beyond just those multinational companies that are already kind of in this arena and Towards the smaller businesses that might be more Disparately located but really important when it comes to Actioning change a local level Is it possible that we can use the larger businesses and their supply chains to reach some of these actors and promote change there? There's also a question about how we generally improve the data that we have available in our toolbox There's a lot of data sets that are shared by businesses and used within their tools and methods Which are also used as the basis of indicators or monitoring processes at the national and international level And it's possible that some shared investment in time resources and data provision could be really beneficial to the sustainable development goal monitoring process So I think if the international community works together with national Implementers and the business community on these questions and on other aspects related to to this There's a real hope I think in some aspects that we can improve the monitoring and reporting process and help to understand how At the SDGs are actually having impact in the key areas that we're concerned about. Thank you