Giving Thoughts

SDG Q&A With Elaine Weidman-Grunewald: Achieving Scale in Solving Global Challenges Through ICT

By Alice Korngold, Co-Editor, Giving Thoughts, and author of A Better World, Inc.: How Companies Profit by Solving Global Problems…Where Governments Cannot and Elaine Weidman-Grunewald, Corporate Vice President, Vice President of Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility at Ericsson.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) build upon the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and converge with the UN’s post-2015 development agenda. The SDGs have a broader remit than the MDGs and included the private sector in their development. This is our second Q&A to learn from companies how they are planning to respond. In this piece, Elaine Weidman-Grunewald from Ericsson answers our questions.

Ericsson understands that the world faces extraordinary challenges that include climate change, economic and social divides and humanitarian crises that will result in 60 million people being displaced around the world. Ericsson also foresees the opportunity that in just a few years, 90 percent of the world’s population will be covered by mobile broadband networks and more than 25 billion devices will be connected. And that such scale brings unprecedented opportunities for businesses to address sustainable development challenges.

Q: What is the value proposition for your company? How are the SDGs incorporated into your company’s corporate responsibility or sustainability strategy?

A: Ericsson was founded 140 years ago on the belief that communication is a basic human need and should be available for all. And we have remained true to that belief since then as we innovate solutions to connect the world. With the adoption of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we saw the opportunity to advocate for the role of ICT is supporting the achievement of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through Information and Communication Technology (ICT). We‘ve embraced the SDGs as the framework for our sustainability efforts, for how we describe our impacts and how we relate to the world around us.

Sustainability and corporate responsibility are central to Ericsson’s core business and we are committed to the triple bottom line of responsible financial and environmental performance along with socio-economic development. The concept we work with to make this happen is Technology for Good™. Our Technology for Good initiatives are not based on philanthropy, but rather seek to utilize our technology and our competence to address sustainability challenges.

Q: Are you targeting certain goals related to your company’s core competencies and/or those of your stakeholders?

These are some examples of the sustainable development challenges covered by the SDGs that we are addressing with innovative technology and partnerships.

• Fostering Financial Inclusion and Growth supporting - SDG 1 Our mobile financial services enhance social and financial inclusion by providing mobile money solutions for the nearly 2 billion people that are “unbanked.” This segment of the population would otherwise have no access to be part of the formal economy. Mobile money services can enable transactions even where people are making 1-2 USD per day.
• Providing Equal Access to Education - SDG4 Our Connect To Learn program uses mobile broadband and cloud services to expand access to quality education, particularly for girls’ secondary education in developing countries. With quality education, girls have a much greater chance to earn a decent living, raise a healthy, productive family and improve their quality of life. Connect To Learn is our global education initiative bringing ICT to secondary schools in remote, resource-poor parts of the world, over mobile broadband, in partnership with organizations like the Earth Institute and UNESCO. We are up and running in 22 countries and over 76,000 students are presently benefiting. We also support initiatives to attract more women into the ICT field and are committed to increasing gender diversity in our own workforce.
• Making Our Cities More Sustainable – SDG 11 Ericsson delivers ICT solutions to cities and communities around the world within transport, energy, public safety, and emergency response. In collaboration with UN-Habitat, we carry out research into sustainable urbanization. Many solutions in our portfolio focus on improved energy performance.

Humanitarian Response ICT also has a role to play in ensuring a rapid and effective response to humanitarian relief efforts. Ericsson Response is a global employee volunteer initiative that is helping to transform emergency response. Volunteers set up mobile networks for voice and data communication that enable aid agencies to work more efficiently to deliver humanitarian relief. Since launching in 2000, the initiative has supported more than 40 relief efforts in more than 30 countries.

Q: Are partnerships important in achieving success with SDGs and in what way?

If ICT is the tool we use to make the world a better place, and our expertise and leadership are the drivers of our work in the area of sustainability and corporate responsibility, one of the ways we can scale our impact is through public-private partnerships.

In our increasingly connected world, which we at Ericsson call the Networked Society, a new way of thinking is required to address global challenges such as the effects of poverty, access to education, healthcare, human rights, climate change, urbanization and humanitarian issues such as refugees, peace building and disaster response.

By combining key strengths in a partnership, we can form joint platforms to succeed in today’s challenging market and find new opportunities for sustainable development.

All our efforts within these areas are detailed the 2015 Ericsson Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility Report. I look forward to continued collaboration with The Conference Board and its members and welcome feedback on the above.

About the author:

Elaine Weidman Grunewald is Vice President of Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility at Ericsson. She joined the company in 1998 and is today part of the Global Leadership Team, and responsible for a number of public private partnerships that explore the use of Technology for Good™ – initiatives that use Ericsson’s technology and skills to solve some of the world’s biggest challenges. Elaine heads Ericsson engagement in a number of external fora, including the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development, the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, the UN Global Compact, and the World Economic Forum.

Alice Korngold is co-editor of Giving Thoughts and the author of A Better World, Inc.: How Companies Profit by Solving Global Problems…Where Governments Cannot (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) and Leveraging Good Will: Strengthening Nonprofits by Engaging Businesses (Jossey Bass, A Wiley Imprint, 2005). For over 20 years, she has been training and placing business executives on NGO/nonprofit boards and consulting to corporations, foundations, and NGOs/nonprofits on board governance, CSR, and sustainability.