Raymond Saner, Amaka Uchegbu and Lichia Yiu; 2019

The current regulatory environment of significance to the PMSC industry is ambiguous as a result of porous legal boundaries and incongruent policies due to competing political and judicial systems: national, regional, and international. Accordingly, it is essential to consider how ambiguities could be reduced and turned into legal certainty through both hard and soft law to prevent human rights abuses.

Climate Warming continues and the increase in world temperature has reached alarming heights. Taking into account the warning of the great majority of scientists, there is real risk that keeping a global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels is seriously in jeopardy and countries have to do much more to honour their commitments given at the Paris Agreement. Business as usual that is publically confessing good intentions (fighting climate change) while at the same time insisting on conventional IP protection needs to be reassessed and solutions be found at the coming HLPF to accelerate the use of renewable energy sources across the globe for the benefit of all.

A recurrent problem in international organizations is the disappearance of institutional history and knowledge. The same can be said about international agreements unless the same key drafters/negotiators are involved in subsequent agreements which is rarely the case. This study provides an example how institutional memory embedded in international agreements can be preserved for the benefit of the next generation of policy negotiators. Hence, as a contribution to the broader reflection on how to align National Sustainable Development Plans with the implementation plan of 2030 Agenda, the purpose of the study is to present a comparative analysis of the 2030 Agenda with 6 outcome documents that were negotiated and agreed by the UN member countries in the domain of sustainability. This analysis aims to identify issues not covered or “unfinished business” in the 2030 Agenda and addressed in a more comprehensive manner or from different perspectives. The list of agreements and outcome documents included are Agenda 21, Programme for the Further Implementation of Agenda 21, Outcomes of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, The Paris Agreement and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda on Financing for Development.

Faced with global concerns about increasing vulnerability of the global system and its sustainability, private companies are asked and encouraged to contribute to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through multi-sectoral partnerships. Implementing the SDGs will require coordinated and collective efforts by all stakeholders to move the world for­ward towards a shared vision as set out in the SDG goals and targets. Business diplomats representing the interests of enterprises are crucial to ensure a mutually beneficial participation of business in the implementation of the SDGs. Propositions are made in this chapter to outline the requisite competencies needed to implement business diplomacy both at the organisational and managerial levels in the context of SDGs implementation.