Throughout 2017, co-operatives have continued to show their commitment to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals via the International Co-operative Alliance’s online platform www.Coopsfor2030.coop.
While a recent report by PwC showed that two in five firms are still either ignoring or having no meaningful engagement with SDGs, co-operatives are leading the way.
Since its launch in July 2016, the Coopsfor2030 platform has attracted almost 300 pledges from 100 co-operatives, some with more than one pledge. These include primary and secondary co-ops and associations.
The platform is part of the Alliance’s global campaign to unite and engage co-ops in the SDG implementation process. Sustainability is also one of the five priorities of the Blueprint for a Co-operative Decade, the Alliance’s global strategy to take co-operation to a new level by 2020.
Among the organisations making pledges is the National Cooperative Business Association in the USA (NCBA CLUSA). The trade body committed to providing clean, abundant, and accessible water to 25,000 people in 90 coffee-producing villages in Indonesia via its Cooperative Water for Sanitation and Health project.
As of March 31, 2017, the Cooperative Water for Sanitation and Health project in Indonesia has provided clean, abundant, and accessible water to 28,580 people in coffee-producing villages, leading to 100% of community members using new water systems. It has also built a total of 50 water systems and trained 54 Water Management Committees to organise volunteer labour for construction and maintenance of the systems.
Similarly, in Ghana, the Young Farmers League Cooperative Society committed to increasing the profit margin of smallholder farmers in the country by minimising the activities of middlemen along the distribution channel. The co-op also aims to link smallholder farmers to shoppers through the country’s first online market for farmers, called the Akuafo Market.
In Japan the Fukushima Mirai Agricultural Cooperative (JA Fukushima Mirai) pledged by 2020 to increase agricultural production in its area to more than the level before the Great East Japan earthquake. The co-op will achieve the target by recovering the farmland once contaminated with radioactivity and providing safe agricultural products to local people.
The platform suggests four action areas where co-ops can make pledges: protecting the environment, improving access to basic goods and services, building a more sustainable food system and eradicating poverty.
The campaign Co-ops for 2030 has been created within the framework of the ICA-EU partnership, also called #coops4dev, to enable co-operatives to learn more about the SDGs, commit to pledges to contribute to achieving the SDGs, and report their progress.
Read more information about #coops4dev partnership here.
Learn more about the campaign and make a pledge by visiting www.coopsfor2030.coop
