Berlin – The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Accelerator Labs Network, with the support of one of its founding investors, the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany (BMZ) and German International Cooperation (GIZ) convened a day-long event bringing together business and foundation leaders to explore the power of social innovation for sustainable development.

At this event, UNDP shared cutting-edge knowledge and insights on sustainability with top executives from sectors including banking, pharmaceuticals, artificial intelligence, information technology, fintech, and agriculture. Discussions ranged from new approaches to driving a circular economy to leveraging digital technologies for financial inclusion.

This gathering provided a platform for exploring collaborative opportunities and pioneering innovative private-public partnerships and research and development (R&D) initiatives to advance sustainable futures.

In anticipation of the upcoming Hamburg Sustainability Conference in October 2024, which will call on business leaders to invest in sustainability, renew global finance, and help build sustainable cities, these discussions set the stage for deeper private-public collaboration. Business leaders were invited to collaborate with the UNDP Accelerator Labs Network and join efforts to deploy the SDG Innovation Commons, the first global R&D capability for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a platform for cutting-edge experimentation for the benefit of people and the planet.

“We invested in the UNDP Accelerator Labs because of our vision to reimagine 21st-century sustainable development together with UNDP. We want to explore new ways of working to keep up with the pace and demands of increasingly complex global challenges. And this investment is bearing fruit. The UNDP Accelerator Labs connect worlds that do not talk to each other often enough: collective intelligence of communities from the bottom up and representatives from governments, the corporate world and academia,” stated at the event Helge Elisabeth Zeitler, Director for UN, EU, G7/G20 and Trade at the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, BMZ. 

"Public funding is far from sufficient to achieve our global development goals by 2030. The future depends on how we can, together, manage to get the private sector involved in order to bring the Sustainable Development Goals back on the road to success. This event is an important contribution to this ambition" said Melanie Hauenstein, director of UNDP Germany Representation Office.

“With thanks to the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, UNDP is finding opportunities with business leaders to share intelligence and test out new ideas as we build the world’s first globally distributed research and development (R&D) capability for the Sustainable Development Goals,” said Gina Lucarelli, Team Leader of the UNDP Accelerator Labs. 

About the UNDP Accelerator Labs

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Accelerator Labs is the world’s largest and fastest learning network on wicked sustainable development challenges. Co-built as a joint venture with the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany and the Qatar Fund for Development, along with Partners at Core for UNDP, the Italian Ministry of Environment and Energy Security as action partner, and the Japan Cabinet, the Network covers 115 countries, and taps into local innovations to create actionable intelligence and reimagine sustainable development for the 21st century. The Network has been awarded Apolitical’s Public Service Team of the Year in 2019, covered in the MIT Sloan Review (2020), analyzed as a Harvard Business School Case Study (2022) and depicted in “For Tomorrow,” a documentary on grassroots innovation, available on Amazon Prime.

Learn more at acceleratorlabs.undp.org or follow us at @UNDPAccLabs

Contact:
Erika Antoine-Souklaye: erika.antoine@undp.org +1 929 406 5348