Melissa Leitner, IFoA Sustainability Board member, introduces the board’s new SDG Curated Reading List and explores the valuable contribution actuaries can bring to sustainable development.
With hope and optimism, I can share that the IFoA Sustainability Board has launched the SDG Curated Reading List.
Leave no-one behind. This is the mission of sustainable development, and the driving force behind the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals. It’s an inspiring mission, and perhaps even more inspiring if stated in the positive: Let everyone thrive.
We are now living in the Anthropocene. Scientists have recently been debating the exact year in which it started, but those dates are all in the past. The extraction of Earth’s resources to meet the needs of 8 billion people is now significantly impacting the planet’s stability.
The ability of planetary resources to feed, house, educate, and support healthy, happy living for the 10 billion more children to be born before 2100, and the many generations of humanity beyond this century, is also at risk. Living within our means, and doing so equitably, is both important and now, urgent.
The commitment to leave no one behind implies we must all share in the gains of prosperity. But I would also emphasise its second, less obvious message: that we must all share in the work of building that prosperity.
Actuarial science is more often described as a mathematical science than as a social science, but it is fundamentally both. Actuaries’ work relates to human vulnerabilities and risks that arise within financial and socio-economic systems.
Whether we realise it or not, our work is already influencing the pace, prioritisation, and extent to which the 2030 sustainable development agenda is achievable. With greater consciousness of what that agenda is, actuaries can contribute in more ways, and more impactfully.
Here, members of the IFoA Sustainability Board and Past President Marjorie Ngwenya give their views on the new reading list.
Pictured here (left to right) are Sustainability Board member Melissa Leitner, IFoA Past President (2017 to 2018) Marjorie Ngwenya, the board’s Chair Marcus Hurd, and board member Shyam Gharial.
In my year of presidency on the IFoA Council, I initiated a campaign to draw actuaries’ attention to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. I am pleased to follow and give my support to the efforts of the IFoA Sustainability Board’s volunteer community, which continues to explore and promote the valuable contribution that actuaries can bring to advancing the SDGs.
Today, the board launches a curated library of content for the SDGs. It is a new learning resource to support actuaries who have a keen interest to grow their understanding of the complex development challenges that face our world. I encourage members of the profession to embrace this learning opportunity, and to consider the intersection of the SDGs with their actuarial work.
2023 marks the half-way point of the 2015 to 2030 timeline to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The New York SDG Summit in September 2023 will accelerate progress towards those goals and the September 2024 Summit of the Future will be a once-in-a-generation moment of change. As the business environment in which we operate shifts, actuaries must integrate the impact of SDGs into their strategic planning and day-to-day work.
Right now, our society faces an array of hugely challenging issues to provide a better future for all. From reversing the drastic loss of the natural resources that underpin our entire civilization to alleviating poverty. While it may not appear so at first, many of these issues are tightly interlinked. They will impact our ability to limit the worst effects of climate change, which is impacting areas of work across the actuarial profession and is already causing widespread disruption to the way of life for many across the planet. Broader sustainability challenges are also issues that we, as empathetic and intelligent beings, should strive to meet for our fellow humans – for those alive today and for our future generations.
It is with great pleasure that we release the first of our SDG learning materials aiming to help you, as fellow actuaries, to better understand sustainability and to, hopefully, provide you with ideas for how these issues can form part of your work.
The SDG Curated Reading List is launched with the first 3 goals available: SDG 1: No poverty, SDG 5: Gender equality, and SDG 13: Climate action.
As an actuary, how will your work contribute to #theworldwewant?
