The global head of consumer goods group Unilever has urged South African companies to eschew short-termism and begin integrating the United Nations’ 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) into their operating models, describing their attainment as not only achievable, but also a high-return business opportunity.

Speaking in Johannesburg on Tuesday, Paul Polman argued that, in the context of climate threats, high unemployment and rising inequality, companies could no longer be run primarily for shareholder returns, but for society as whole.

He argued, too, that firms should increasingly focus on “transformative changes” rather than corporate social responsibility programmes that made them “less bad”, highlighting the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan (USLP) as its blueprint for leveraging its products and supply chains to create jobs, lower environmental impacts and improve health.

Through the USLP the Anglo-Dutch multinational, which among its 400 brands produces household names such as OMO washing powder, Dove soap, Knorr soup, Hellmann’s mayonnaise, Lipton tea, Magnum ice-cream and Domestos toilet cleaner, aims to decouple its growth from its environmental impact and to increase its social impact.

The ‘farm-to-fork plan’ is supported by specific targets, including improving the health and wellbeing of 1-billion people, creating five-million additional jobs in the Unilever supply chain and sourcing sustainable inputs.

The strategy assisted Unilever, which reported sales of €53.3-billion in 2015, obtain the highest score in Oxfam’s 2015 ‘Behind the Brands’ ranking of the sustainable business practices of leading food brands and lead its sector in the 2015 Dow Jones Sustainability Index.

“In today’s global economy, it’s very difficult to create jobs to provide growth . . . But with the SDGs we have a framework that has a higher moral order of irreversibly eradicating poverty, which is probably our biggest investment opportunity that we have in the world, with some of the highest returns you’ve ever seen.”

A dollar invested into nutrition, Polman asserted, had a $17 return for society, while extending the same access to finance, education, training and land rights to women could grow the global economy by $28-trillion. Likewise, investing in water, sanitation and hygiene could have a return of between $5 and $60 for every dollar invested.

“The investments needed to achieve the SDGs are estimated to be $2- to $3-trillion a year. That sounds like a lot of money, but this is a global economy of $110-trillion – we are only talking about 2% to 3% investment every year for a payout that is a multiple of five or ten times.”

However, for business to play its role in unlocking these returns it could not focus purely on short-term returns for shareholders and would need to pursue partnerships with governments, nongovernmental organisations and communities in the interest of the “common good”.

“Increasingly, we have become myopically focused on the shareholders; which has shortened the average life of a publically-traded company in the US to only 17 years, because we are running them for the shareholders and not for the longer term. So we have to bring this back to running companies for society.”

Accounting practices would also need to change, as businesses only “treasure what we measure and measure what we treasure”. In other words, Polman argued that the definition of business accounting should be expanded to include environmental and social accounting to broaden the definition of what is valued.

“We also need to solve the issues of the few versus the many. This is an economy now, where 62 people, who you could put on a double-decker in London, have the same wealth as the bottom 3.5-billion people; where the top 1% now has the same wealth as the bottom 99%.

“The system of rewarding capital and not rewarding labour anymore  . . . has to transform.”

Polman acknowledged the goal of zero carbon and poverty as being an “enormously audacious agenda”, but he argued that it was not only possible, but also necessary.

“I’ve come to the conclusion that we don’t need more PhDs, nor too much more technology, we really need leadership and will power – everything that needs to be done to put this agenda in place can be done with the knowledge that we have today.”