Highlight 35/2024: Social innovation as a key catalyst for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals: the role of a bottom-up, local governance approach
Maria Fernanda Forero Ramirez, 16 October 2024
Social innovation refers to the development and implementation of new ideas, practices, or solutions aimed at addressing social, environmental, or cultural challenges. It seeks to create sustainable and inclusive change, and involves collaboration across sectors, including governments, nonprofits, and businesses. Social innovation initiatives can range from technological advancements to policy changes or grassroots movements, with an emphasis on systemic impact. A concept that originated in the 19th century through social reform advocacy to address the negative impacts of industrialization, has evolved into a global movement committed to social change through innovative solutions.
Social innovation and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are therefore closely intertwined. While social innovation focuses on creating systemic solutions to the most pressing social problems, the SDGs agreed by the UN in 2015 provide the most comprehensive possible framework for addressing such critical issues like poverty, inequality, climate change, and health by 2030.
Some well-known examples of how social innovation has contributed to specific SDGs include the pioneer microfinance model of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, which provides small loans to impoverished individuals, particularly women, to start businesses without requiring collateral. This model has lifted millions out of poverty and improved their livelihoods. Microfinance has since spread globally, significantly contributing to SDG 1. Another example is the affordable solar home systems for low-income households model implemented by M-KOPA Solar in Kenya, which has provided over 1 million households with access to clean, affordable energy, reducing reliance on kerosene and improving living conditions, thus contributing to SDG 7. This business model is expanding to other countries in Africa.
Social innovations often emerge from local needs, creating scalable solutions from a bottom-up approach, which in turn have to rely on the effectiveness of governance processes at a local level, and on collaboration between sectors at the national and regional level.
With only six years remaining to the 2030 deadline, global progress on the SDGs is alarmingly insufficient. The SDG Report 2024 released last June shows a grim picture: only 17% of the 169 targets are on track, nearly half show minimal progress, and over one-third are stalled or regressing. Despite tangible improvements in areas such as prevention of HIV infection, reduction of child mortality, and access to energy and mobile broadband, SDG progress in critical areas like poverty reduction, peace and security, and climate action has been hindered by escalating conflicts, the lingering repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the climate crisis.
During the launch of the report, UN Secretary-General António Guterres emphasized the need for accelerated action on peace, the green and digital transitions, and finance. However, his remarks regarding the speed and scale required to get the SDGs back on track appeared to focus solely on top-down approaches, dependent on major adjustments to global economic governance and large-scale commitments of private finance. While it is undeniable that these significant changes are necessary, the 2024 report presentation overlooked the simultaneous need to leverage local initiatives, which could be scaled up by harnessing the power of social innovation.
Maria Fernanda Forero Ramirez, Highlight 35/2024 – Social innovation as a key catalyst for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals: the role of a bottom-up, local governance approach, 16 October 2024, available at www.meig.ch
The views expressed in the MEIG Highlights are personal to the authors and neither reflect the positions of the MEIG Programme nor those of the University of Geneva.