Digital and the Sustainable Development Goals

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are seventeen goals, agreed by the world's governments, for a fairer and more sustainable future by 2030. They cover everything from climate action and life below water to good health, quality education and reduced inequality. We use them as our compass: the work we take on is meant to help advance one or more of them, and if a project does not, it is probably not for us.

Why the SDGs, and why "digital"

The SDGs are ambitious, and meeting them depends in part on organisations being able to work effectively, reach people, understand their own impact, and coordinate with others. That is precisely where good digital tools help. A charity that can raise funds more effectively, a research institute that can get its findings to policymakers, an environmental organisation that can turn its data into something the public understands: in each case, technology is quietly serving a goal much larger than itself.

That is what we mean by digital SDGs. Not technology as the point, but technology as a means to the ends the goals describe.

How our work maps to the goals

• Climate action (SDG 13) and life below water (SDG 14). Our work on the Blue Carbon Geonode helps map and protect the coastal ecosystems that store carbon, supporting both climate and marine goals.
• Responsible consumption and production (SDG 12). Tools like the Supply Chain Net Zero work help organisations measure and reduce the emissions embedded in what they make and buy - and the Debunking Plastic Myths project makes the science of plastic waste and recycling accessible to a wide public audience.
• Affordable and clean energy (SDG 7). The Smart Islands Energy Project helped the Isles of Scilly community make better use of renewable energy, while the Net Positive Life App supports individuals and organisations in cutting their carbon footprint across home, transport, food, and money.
• Good health and well-being (SDG 3). We designed and built the website for the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, making world-class cancer research easy to navigate, and created a contactless payment system during the pandemic that let people receive items without physical contact.
• Gender equality (SDG 5). We built and support the Women's Prize website, home to one of the world's most prestigious celebrations of women's writing.
• Reduced inequalities (SDG 10). Grant Pilot puts expert-level grant-finding within reach of under-resourced communities, and we rebuilt the LDN London website to give learning disabled people and their families a genuinely accessible route to support.
• No poverty and zero hunger (SDGs 1 and 2). Our AI-Powered Innovation Portal helps social impact researchers across Africa work faster and focus on the analysis that improves lives.
• Industry, innovation and infrastructure (SDG 9). The Hyperloop Route Planner helped make the case for a cleaner, faster future transport network by letting people compare it against conventional travel.
• Partnerships for the goals (SDG 17). Underpinning much of our work, from the Social Impact Database organising research for a global audience to our collaborations with GRID-Arendal and UN-linked bodies, is a commitment to helping mission-driven organisations amplify their impact..

The honest version

We are not claiming to save the world, and we are wary of organisations that do. What we can honestly say is that we choose our work by whether it helps, we measure ourselves partly by that, and we would rather turn down work that does not fit than pretend everything we do advances a global goal. The SDGs keep us honest about it.

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