How we apply the Sustainable Development Goals to our work?
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At Team Francesca Clapcich Powered by 11th Hour Racing, sailing isn’t just about racing to the finish line, it’s also about believing in a better future, belonging to a global community, and achieving meaningful change, both on and off the water.
That’s why we’ve aligned our journey with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These 17 goals give us a shared map to navigate some of the world’s biggest challenges, from protecting the ocean we sail on, to supporting the people and communities we meet along the way. The SDGs aren’t just big-picture ideals, they’re daily choices, and we’re super proud to be literally carrying them with us on our temporary branding for the TRANSAT CAFÉ L’OR onboard our new IMOCA.
Keen to find out more about the SDGs? We caught up with Ellen Salter from our purpose consultancy Think Beyond to find out more about the background to the SDGs, what their impact is, and what we can all be doing to collectively create a better future for everyone.
1️⃣ Why were the SDGs created, and how do they build on previous global climate efforts?
In 2015, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) came to life during the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit in New York. Over three days, more than 150 global leaders arrived at the United Nations Headquarters to push forward an ambitious plan for global sustainable development. Recognizing the need for global unity across social, economic, and environmental topics, the UN SDGs were born – representing 17 sustainable development goals with 169 targets to accelerate progress across health and wellbeing, poverty alleviation, resilience, and climate change. The goals built upon the foundational work of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) established 15 years earlier and key global frameworks such as the UNFCC’s Paris Agreement on climate change. The SDGs took these frameworks further, recognizing that climate action must be socially inclusive to mitigate against the worst impacts and enhance global resilience.
3️⃣ What makes the SDGs so powerful for teams like ours, which are trying to create impact beyond sport?
It’s great to see that Team Francesca Clapcich has adopted the SDGs. The power of the SDGs is the simplicity of its message and its common globally recognized language. By aligning with the SDGs, you can readily engage others (within and outside of sustainability) to clearly communicate the team’s focus areas and contribution to sustainable development. This will enable conversations with fans, prospective commercial partners and sponsors, and wider networks and highlight areas for collaboration to deliver impact at scale. And collaboration is arguably the biggest value of the global sustainable development goals. Achieving these requires togetherness and collective action – key to the heart of the team. By using the SDGs as a vehicle for engagement, Team Francesca Clapcich can accelerate its goal of a better future whilst belonging to a global community who are working together to tangibly progress global sustainable development.
STAY CURIOUS
Keep learning about global challenges and share what you discover with family, friends, and on social media.
GENDER EQUALITY
DECENT WORK AND ECONOMIC GROWTH
REDUCED INEQUALITIES
CLIMATE ACTION
LIFE BELOW WATER
PEACE, JUSTICE, AND STRONG INSTITUTIONS
PARTNERSHIP FOR THE GOALS
2️⃣ How do the SDGs connect to our daily lives, even for people who don’t work in sustainability?
While originally intended as a global framework, the SDGs can be applied to our individual lifestyles, the daily choices we make, and how we view the world around us. The SDGs are a powerful (and colorful!) communication tool and the key themes are easily understandable. It can help us to understand the vast and interconnected nature of environmental, social, and economic topics and that sustainable decisions can be taken across all walks of life – from education to the food we buy to the hours we volunteer and our physical and mental wellbeing. A number of organizations have also sought to make the SDGs digestible at the individual level through guidance, suggested actions, and gamification – my phone even has an SDG app to track choices linked back to the goals. Start by exploring the goals and looking at actions you could take – could you take more sustainable transport, engage with community groups and / or switch to a renewable energy tariff? There’s something in there for everyone.
4️⃣ Where are we making the most progress — and where are we falling behind?
Each year, the United Nations produces a progress report on the UN SDGs. It’s worth checking out – and keeping an eye on for future years. In 2024, the report found that only 17% of the UN SDG targets are on track, with 50% showing minimal to moderate progress, and around a third has stalled or even regressed. We are falling behind in areas such as poverty eradication (impacted further by the COVID-19 pandemic and worsened by climate change), global hunger and food insecurity, and climate action. While this seems bleak, it isn’t all doom and gloom – we have seen global reductions in child mortality (with global under-5 deaths reaching a record low of 4.9 million in 2022, down from 6.0 million in 2015), HIV infections, and improvements in access to water, internet access, and energy. For example, the number of people without access to electricity dropped from 958 million in 2015 to 685 million in 2022.
In short, progress towards sustainable development is a mixed bag. Progress reporting is a useful and transparent way to understand where we need to prioritize, step up, and amend our efforts. It’s also incredibly helpful to recognize the complex interconnectivity of sustainable development - where global shockers and stressors may impact sustainable development and how solving one issue may help to solve another. For Team Francesca Clapcich it presents three key messages:
We need solidarity and we need to act as one united planet.
Justice is key to any progress – we need to recognize and support the interconnected value of economic, social and environmental topics.
We need to keep going and faster!
5️⃣ What’s one simple mindset shift you’d recommend for people who want to help achieve the SDGs?
You can make an impact. We won’t solve global challenges alone, but we will inspire collective action if we try; and it’s important to try. Taking a first step towards sustainable development, talking about it, raising awareness, and educating yourself and others has a much more far-reaching impact than you realize. There is no local action without individual action, no global action without local action. Everyone can make an impact. If you are fortunate to have the skills, time, and means to do so - think about acting in solidarity. Can you make a sustainable choice that benefits those without the platform to do so?
So … do you want to do more yourself?
You don’t need to be part of a racing team to live the Believe, Belong, Achieve values and support the global effort towards SDGs.
BELIEVE IN SMALL CHANGES
Small actions like skipping single-use plastics, taking public transport, buying only what you need, supporting brands that prioritize sustainability, fair labor, and ethical sourcing, repair, reuse, and recycle where possible all add up.
REDUCE YOUR FOOTPRINT
Conserve energy at home, reduce waste, and make mindful purchases.
SPREAD KINDNESS
From the ocean to your local neighborhood, every positive action makes waves.
BELIONG TO YOUR COMMUNINITY
Support local businesses, volunteer, or join local sustainability efforts.
So which SDGs are we aligning to?
SDG
TARGETS
Adopt and strengthen sound policies and enforceable legislation for the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls at all levels.
Ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic, and public life
Promote development-oriented policies that support productive activities, decent job creation, entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation, and encourage the formalization and growth of micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises, including through access to financial services.
Improve progressively, through 2030, global resource efficiency in consumption and production and endeavour to decouple economic growth from environmental degradation, in accordance with the 10-Year Framework of Programmes on Sustainable Consumption and Production, with developed countries taking the lead.
Ensure enhanced representation and voice for developing countries in decision-making in global international economic and financial institutions in order to deliver more effective, credible, accountable and legitimate institutions.
Ensure equal opportunity and reduce inequalities of outcome, including by eliminating discriminatory laws, policies and practices and promoting appropriate legislation, policies and action in this regard
Improve education, awareness-raising and human and institutional capacity on climate change mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction and early warning.
Strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters in all countries.
Integrate climate change measures into national policies, strategies and planning.
Promote mechanisms for raising capacity for effective climate change-related planning and management in least developed countries and small island developing states, including focusing on women, youth and local and marginalized communities.
By 2020, sustainably manage and protect marine and coastal ecosystems to avoid significant adverse impacts, including by strengthening their resilience, and take action for their restoration in order to achieve healthy and productive oceans.
By 2025, prevent and significantly reduce marine pollution of all kinds, in particular from land-based activities, including marine debris and nutrient pollution.
Ensure responsive, inclusive, participatory and representative decision-making at all levels.
Develop effective, accountable and transparent institutions at all levels.
Promote the rule of law at the national and international levels and ensure equal access to justice for all.
Promote and enforce non-discriminatory laws and policies for sustainable development.
Enhance the global partnership for sustainable development, complemented by multi-stakeholder partnerships that mobilize and share knowledge, expertise, technology and financial resources, to support the achievement of the sustainable development goals in all countries, in particular developing countries.
Encourage and promote effective public, public-private and civil society partnerships, building on the experience and resourcing strategies of partnerships.
WHAT WE ARE DOING
Establishing a robust, diverse governance structure with diverse representation at senior management/decision-making level.
Creating lasting, positive change by identifying and advocating for legislative solutions.
Articulating Francesca’s own story around Believe, Belong, Achieve. This will underpin how she takes part in a team, leads and team and ultimately leads a campaign.
Supporting our fellow sailors to create their own ‘why’ and build confidence in their own voice.
Managing our negative impacts on the environment by reducing our waste, carbon emissions, use of natural resources, and single use materials.
Build a High-Performance Team model for sailing and create a safe, inclusive, and welcoming team environment.
Creating an impactful action program which will build on Francesca’s own personal narrative, delivering this through education, advocacy, collective action, and lobbying.
Giving those affected by our operations a voice and be part of our decision-making.
Having a clear understanding of the societal impact of our campaign both now and in the future, grounded in the principles of climate justice.
Multiplying the voices around Believe, Belong, Achieve.
Creating a safe space for our colleagues and fellow athletes and create stories about people who are inspired how they Believe, Belong, Achieve.
Managing our negative impacts on the environment by reducing our waste, carbon emissions, use of natural resources, and single use materials.
Understanding our relationship with the environment.
Tracking environmental impact baseline, understand environmental risk assessment from changing environmental conditions.
Demonstrating a High Performance Team model based on operating with integrity and accountability, and leading by example.
Acting with transparency, honesty, and authenticity. Francesca creates space for diverse voices building confidence and belief from her fellow team. She creates sound governance structures across ther business and seeks out partners to match her standards and deliver scalable impact.
Creating lasting positive change.
Identifying and advocating for legislative solutions.
Scaling impact through meaningful activations and our athlete allyship and advocacy programs that deliver meaningful change.
Creating a Theory of Change to underpin societal and community impact.
Creating an exemplar, purpose-led organization.
Establishing effective business processes delivering on purpose and targets externally validated.
Establishing a robust, diverse governance structure.
Ensuring a diverse representation at senior management/ decision-making.
Creating impactful partnerships with organizations, individuals, and wider communities that support and scale the impact of our work.
Creating a blueprint for change, with activations taken forward by other sailing teams and sports.
Team Values & Behaviors
We’ve thought long and hard about who we want to be, how we want to behave, and what impact we want to have during our campaign. We have five Values and Behaviors we will look to apply in everything we do: respect, accountability, creativity, equity, and empowerment.
We are sharing our expected Values and Behaviors openly to make us accountable each and every day.
© Harry KH | The Ocean Race | 11th Hour Racing Team
Together, let us create a future where inclusivity thrives, barriers crumble, and every individual, regardless of background, feels seen, heard, and empowered. It is my mission to inspire change and foster a community where diversity is celebrated, and equality is the norm.
Francesca Clapcich
