(Part 3): HOW alignment towards Green Medicine for SDG3 Impact is the game-changer for all stakeholders, investors, and funders?

Joanne Sienko Ott, CFA
Nov 6 · 4 min read

To achieve the 2030 Agenda towards sustainable development, large investors, NGOs, enterprises, and governmental agencies aim to target theUN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by aligning funding and tracking their impact to each of the SDGs. As they attempt to push the needle further to make real impact with SDG3 Good Health & Wellbeing outcomes — #GreenMedicine will be the game-changer.

The 3-part series will explain the WHAT, WHY, & HOW of #GreenMedicine to impact SDG3.

(Part I): WHAT is Green Medicine?

(Part 2): WHY Green Medicine matters?

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(Part 3): HOW alignment towards Green Medicine for SDG3 impact is the game-changer

Part 1, covered WHAT is Green Medicine, Part 2 discussed WHY Green Medicine matters.

Akin to its cousin #GreenEnergy, #GreenMedicine is biologically centered, sustainable in treating ‘root-cause,’ and non-toxic. Likewise, they both require their biological ecosystem to be balanced to maintain health. Green Medicine is the necessary approach to aligning with SDG3.

Let’s understand the fast-moving trend towards SDG alignment.

The United Nations 2030 Agenda is a bold agenda for 17 Sustainable Development Goals with 169 specific targets for action on economic, social, and environmental well-being for people, planet, and prosperity. SDG 3 is Good Health & Wellbeing and consists of 13 targets, with one target specific to chronic conditions.

SDG 3.4 target:

By 2030, reduce by one-third premature mortality from non-communicable diseases through prevention and treatment and promote mental health and well-being.

Under the UN’s SDG framework, investors and funders now have a clear mandate for which goals matter. As a result, Best Practices are converging to ‘measure what matters’ to provide funders a ‘Scoreboard’ of impact comparisons.

Across the spectrum (private and public sectors), asset managers (institutional, governmental, individual wealth), and non-profit funders are all seeking ways to align with the SDGs. It is estimated that $502 billion global assets under management (AUM) are invested for environmental and social impact, which has grown rapidly each year, based on the 2019 report from Global Impact Investor Network (GIIN).

The lens in which investors view fiduciary responsibility has changed. Free-market-principles and investor/funder fiduciary responsibility now are requiring consideration of SDGs as an opportunity for sustainability and for managing risk.

Augmenting Investment Strategy and Long-term Financial Returns

FIDUCIARY DUTY: Investors must consider all financially material factors when acting in the best interests of beneficiaries, which includes activities that aim to prevent or even combat root causesof systemic risks. Fulfilling fiduciary duty can involve incorporating SDG data that is financially material to investment performance.” (17 Asset Management)

Yet herein lies the greatest opportunity, considering there are now over 2000 signatories with almost $90 trillion AUM worldwide committed to the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), and eventual targeting of the SDGs. This could be the catalyzing force to open the floodgates of investment to meet the UN’s 2030 agenda goals.

What is essentially important as to the SDG investment in-of-itself, is the impact measurement and management (IMM) of alignment with a specific SDG as part of funders goals. Activity in and of itself– e.g. ‘more pharmaceutical drugs sold’ — does not sufficiently represent an impact outcome towards a particular SDG. Funders now have a framework to evaluate outcome along the SDG impact spectrum from –“do no harm” to deep impact contribution.

Constituent Voice is a grounding principle that ascertains the depth of impact and outcomes. From this, patients will have a voice on which treatmentswork. It will also ensure that Greenwashing (activity extrapolated as outcome) doesn’t happen.

As pointed in Part 2 of this blog series, in the U.S. alone, 70% of deaths are caused by chronic conditions, and account for 75% of the $3 trillion yearly spent in healthcare. This is a hefty price to pay for healthcare that isn’t working as intended. For SDG3, the UN estimates the yearly gap in additional investment needed to achieve the 2030 agenda is $140 billion annually. This is an astonishing amount of investment, 3x the amount currently spent each year on healthcare infrastructure.

Logically, it seems the best approach for lowering the trajectory of chronic healthcare costs is to invest in treatments that are sustainable in treating root-causesso that future costs are eliminated, and Patient health is improved. Green Medicine can fill the gap where conventional medicine has had limitations in achieving SDG3 goals for chronic conditions.

We no longer need to rely on the unsustainable prospect of ‘a pill for every ill.’

The call-to-action will be to develop sound metrics and measurement of impact and outcomes that matter in reducing chronic conditions and that are grounded by a systems-biology or Green Medicine methodology.

This Theory of Change implies:

A Scoreboard of Impact Comparisons will demonstrate aligning funding with Green Medicine to achieve SDG3.4 goals will have the biggest impact.

Under this premise, I believe it will be Green Medicine that will drive impact and outcomes towards SDG3 and could potentially lower substantially the UN’s estimate of $140 billion needed annually to meet the 2030 agenda.

Green Medicine that is biologically centered, sustainable in treating root-cause, and non-toxic. Green Medicine alone has the potential to surpass SDG3.4 target goals and reduce healthcare costs dramatically.

The blog will continue to address strategy for how #GreenMedicine is aligned with SDG3.

Joanne Sienko Ott, CFA

Written by

SDG 3.0 Strategist & #GreenMedicine Activist. Pioneering futurist at the intersection of behavioral finance and integrative medicine.

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