SDG8: What Does Decent Work & Economic Growth For All Mean?

The debilitating COVID-19 pandemic has affected the global economy on an unimaginable scale. The International Monetary Fund predicts the global recession to be worse than in 2009, due to which the global labor force is in danger and would face a worse hit. In such a situation, the agri-ecosystem must aim to achieve sustainable development goals, set up by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015. 

The SDG 8 aims to ‘promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all.’

Sustainable Development Goal 8 emphasizes the importance of sustainable economic growth and productivity. It will eventually boost job opportunities, both qualitatively and quantitatively. It will also promote the efficiency of resource utilization in production and consumption. Furthermore, it will help eliminate child labor, human trafficking, and labor exploitation. SDG 8 is, thus, an important parameter to encourage a safe and secure working environment for the global workforce.

Why is SDG 8 Important to Build a Better Future?

In the era of accelerated climate change, the definition of a ‘decent’ job is also changing. Traditional jobs that usually compromise the ecosystem balance and energy flows are losing their relevance. 

To minimize this compromise and deliver satisfaction and growth for labor, organizations are resorting to Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning empowered tools that help match their skills to various jobs. Furthermore, organizations can use digital solutions to monitor time clocked, productivity, and labor practices to minimize exploitation and boost efficiency. Digital tools and Machine Learning tools help ensure a safe and conducive work environment for everyone. 

Every industry and sector is at the cusp of change. A change that will embrace all factors like open communications, gender mix, climate, working conditions, and skill requirements will enable laborers to upskill, learn, grow, and deliver sustainable growth for all parties. 

Unlike other sustainable development goals that focus specifically on aspects, including equality, poverty, hunger, education, and the like, sustainable development goal eight focuses on inclusive economic growth and work environment quality on a global scale, which invariably contributes to achieving the other goals, too.

SDG 8 would ensure sustainable production, distribution, and consumption and advocate development-oriented policies through productive activities. Besides, it provides room for creativity and innovation. It further encourages entrepreneurs, small and medium-scale businesses, and even small-holding farmers by providing easy access to financial remedies. 

Objectives of SDG 8 and Cropin: The Perfect Merger of Ideologies

Here is how Sustainable Development Goal 8 aims at achieving decent work and economic growth culture and how Cropin can be the perfect catalyst of change.

• Target 8.1: Sustainable economic growth.  Globally, a large section of the economy depends on farming and agriculture. However, inefficient usage and lack of resources may hamper economic growth, pushing farmers and associated brands to riskier zones. Here, Cropin provides efficient solutions through products like SmartRisk, to support them in achieving sustainable economic growth.

• Target 8.2: Diversify, innovate, and upgrade for economic productivity. Economic productivity depends on fair resource utilization and advanced technologies to increase yield. With innovation, advancement, and diversification, Cropin reinforces economic productivity. 

• Target 8.5: Full employment and decent work with equal pay.  One of the principal parameters of fair work culture is to provide equal pay to all. Ensuring women empowerment, equal wages and worker rights, and decent work culture can become a reality rather than a mere possibility.

And Cropin makes this transition more straightforward with its innovative products.

• Target 8.4: Improve resource efficiency in consumption and production. Sustainable Consumption and Production, or SCP, translates to doing more and better with less and is vital for any economic upliftment. It involves reductions in resource usage, degradation, and pollution along the whole lifecycle, in a way that the economic activities increase net welfare gains and quality of life. With Cropin’s digital agriculture solutions, agribusiness can translate raw agri-data into actionable insights that help optimize processes and minimize resource usage.

• Target 8.7: End modern slavery, trafficking, and child labor. SmartFarm helps address the issue of child labor with features that include digital farmer registration, complete socio-economic profiling, field staff tracking, and notification alerts to management in case of forced labor.

• Target 8.10: Universal access to banking, insurance, and financial services. Banking and finance are crucial aspects of any small or large-scale industry, be it tech-based or agriculture.  With that in mind, SmartRisk  facilitates an easy and smooth financial security to lend loans confidently and safely, even to small-holding farmers.

Decent work and economic growth faces a multi-layered problem. Depending on numerous diversification factors like demography, climate, economy, and availability of resources, farmers encounter varied challenges. Even after huge investments, they do not often attain a satisfactory level of production. Leading contributing factors fueling this issue are insufficient management skills, uneven utilization of resources, dependence on manual labor for an immense amount of work, and inaccurate predictability of weather conditions, among several others.  

Addressing the problems, Cropin has designed several advanced tech-based solutions to reinforce a healthy, safe and secure farming experience. It would emphasize a secure work environment, boost the employment rate, enhance economic inclusion, minimize discrimination, help in capacity-building, and much more. Besides, it would help to build a skilled workforce and eliminate forced labor and labor exploitation. 

In short, it will eventually influence and promote sustainable development goals to build a better future for all.