Growing Sustainable Business

About GSB

Objective

The GSB delivery mechanism helps reduce risk. It is a platform for companies to engage in pro-poor business activities in developing countries with a challenging business environment. Looking beyond social investments and philanthropy, the GSB mechanism is a service offered to companies that seek to develop commercially viable business projects within their core business or value chain with a view to increasing profitability and/or engaging in new markets. At its core, the GSB provides a vehicle for a company to do well by doing good. For more information about GSB, download the GSB brochure.

Background

The Growing Sustainable Business (GSB) initiative grew out of the 2002 Global Compact Policy Dialogue on Business and Sustainable Development and is a key response to the report by the Commission on the Private Sector and Development - Unleashing Entrepreneurship 2005. The initiative was conceptualized by the private sector, announced and launched at WSSD, Johannesburg 2002 - endorsed in high level session. The GSB is coordinated by UNDP in cooperation with the UN Global Compact Office and its core agencies. The GSB was also highlighted in the report from the Commission for Africa March 2005.

The Growing Sustainable Business initiative recognizes that given the little investment that is reaching rural and other less developed regions of developing countries, the Millennium Development Goals will not be achieved without sustainable investment by the private sector. The GSB further recognizes that the untapped market opportunities will enable multi-stakeholder & cross-sector partnerships to greatly assist enterprise solutions to poverty reduction.

A full time broker: In each participating country a full-time GSB Broker is recruited to act as a convener and intermediary for business, government, civil society, potential sources of finance, and development partners. S/he helps identify, develop and support specific sustainable business investment projects, leveraging UNDP’s impartiality, its convening power, and its ability to facilitate and coordinate, and to create space at country level for interested stakeholders to come together and forge partnerships, raise issues, demonstrate and solve problems, and engage government. The broker also plays a key role in problem solving and conflict resolution.

Research Platform: GSB can provide co-funding for socio-economic and feasibility studies, which inform specific business plans for investment in a country's value chain. As there is a publicly funded element to such findings, all information would be placed on the public record. Public dissemination of such research has the further benefits of increasing knowledge among government, donors and other interested stakeholders and, concretely, potentially sparking further investments.

Technical Assistance Platform: GSB can help prepare local stakeholders, in particular local entrepreneurs, local government and local NGOs that might be expected to play a role in the implementation of any given GSB investment project. Financial support from GSB/UNDP could be considered to provide technical assistance & capacity building related to a specific investment, as a public sector funded and implemented component in support of the investment project.

Demand-driven

UNDP can provide a demand-driven, open, inclusive, and transparent multi-stakeholder platform for brokering pro-poor business development in support of UNDP’s goals and national priorities. It can promote respect for the Global Compact principles and ensure that unfair competitive advantage is NOT conferred to a particular company. UNDP/GSB can also facilitate access to supplementary (public) finance (e.g. SRI) in support of specific investments as well as consider financial support on a cost-sharing basis to research capacity building activities that are vital to the GSB business model development.