Building Partnerships: Cooperation between the United Nations and the Private Sector
In these challenging times, the United Nations and its Member States have a more important role than ever. But governments and inter-governmental bodies can no longer ‘do it alone’. They must reach out to business and civil society as never before. Within the context of clear regulatory frameworks and effective market mechanisms the private sector can offer new ideas, technologies and approaches to help governments tackle global challenges such as access to water, energy, capital and information technology, malnutrition, illiteracy, disease, conflict and environmental degradation. This publication provides the most comprehensive overview to-date of cooperation between the United Nations system and the business community aimed at addressing these challenges, including over 150 examples from around the world. The book highlights both obstacles and opportunities and it makes a compelling case that despite the obstacles, partnerships between the UN system, governments, business and civil society organisations offer one of our greatest hopes for meeting the global challenges of the 21st century.