Experts said that customization of SDGs and private sector engagement can play a vital role to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals not only in Bangladesh but all over the world.
They said CMAs can encourage businesses to meet SDG requirements through improved innovation capabilities; emphasize the importance of ethical behaviour with professional engagement throughout the value chain and can provide decision makers with information about sustainability factors.
They made the observation while attending different sessions of the 2nd day of the Sustainable Development Conference in Thailand on Monday.
Fellow member of Institute of Cost and Management Accountants of Bangladesh (ICMAB) and the Deputy Managing Director of Prime Bank Md Touhidul Alam Khan attended the conference as an expert from Bangladesh
At the conference, he made a presentation on Monday afternoon on ‘Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Implementation Status in Bangladesh’ in the international conference.
He said the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina has said that she is confident Bangladesh must show its capacity in achieving SDGs the way it achieved the MDGs.
The delegates attending the conference from different countries highly appreciated his presentation and lauded the present on-going efforts taken by the Government of Bangladesh (GoB) towards achieving the agenda of sustainable development goals by 2030.
Dr Saran M Toure from Canada, presented papers on ‘Powering Drones using Nature’. In his case study, he said Notos technologies system keeps commercial UAGs in the air without using a motor, by automatically finding and catching rides on naturally occurring thermals, similar to how to birds stay aloft.
The representatives from India, Vietnam, Philippines, Japan and Malaysia also presented different papers on various aspects related to sustainable development based on respective goals.
The two Indian experts Dr Uttam Ghosh and Madhura Rasane presented papers on ‘Bioremediation of distillery spent wash and biomass production using Microbial Fuel Cell’ and “Open spaces in the neighbourhood and its effect on the activities of the users’ respectively.
“Sustainable Mined Land Reclamation: Pujada Nickel Case Study” was the topic of Dr Arvin Carlom who attended the conference from Philippines. In his study, he has shown the way of determination of stakeholders’ interests over the mined land and the recognition of instruments covering the area.
Regarding the progress and implementation status of SDGs in Bangladesh, Touhidul Alam explained, “Bangladesh together with other world leaders adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development at the United Nations General Assembly in New York on 25 September 2015. This is a global commitment towards a more sustainable, resilient and inclusive development, with 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets.”
As a banker, he has also explained the role of Bangladesh Bank in achieving SDGs in Bangladesh. As central Bank, BB is playing a vital role to design policy guidelines and programs for stakeholders of financial sector of Bangladesh towards implementing the above sustainable development goals.
Khan said, “Localization/customization of SDGs and private sector engagement can play a vital role to achieve the SDGs not only in Bangladesh but all over the world. And, first of all, awareness needs to be created at all levels in turning 2030 Agenda from a global vision into a local reality."
Khan, who is also first Certified Sustainability Reporting Assurer (CSRA) in Bangladesh and Head of Sustainability Reporting Committee (SRC) of Prime Bank also presented a paper on “Sustainability reporting towards sustainable development in banking sector: Bangladesh Perspectives” in the last International Sustainable Development Conference(SDC) in 2018.He is also the member of Scientific Committee and member of jury board of this year’s conference.
Total 16 countries from USA, Egypt, India, Morocco, Malaysia, Vietnam, Philippines, Japan, Canada, Bangladesh, Czech Republic, Thailand, Korea, Madagascar, Sweden and Qatar are presenting their papers on various topics related to sustainable development issues in this three-day international conference which will be concluded today.