A science-based heuristic to guide sector-level SDG investment strategy

Aligning investments with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)has been a longstanding ambition for many private investors. Theassessment of corporate impact on the SDGs is not a trivial task,and most present-day attempts often overlook SDG interactions,and lack scientific anchoring and transparency. We present anevidence-based review approach for investors to assess sector-level impacts on individual SDGs, and score these using a traffic-light system. Our initial review documents impacts of 81economic sectors on SDGs 1-16. Results show that environmentalSDGs are impacted negatively by most economic sectors, andthat primary sector activities negatively impact the highestnumber of SDGs. Using the agricultural sector as a case, we drawon Causal Loop methodology to illustrate spillovers resultingfrom SDG interactions. Our findings point to three keyconsiderations of relevance for sustainable investment strategies;the necessity to capture ‘impact shadows’, spillovers across SDGs,and the hierarchical nature of the SDGs.