TO 86 Agenda 2030 Compass

Promoting societal benefits through identifying and creating synergies between the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals in conjunction with other stakeholders

Jernkontoret, at the turn of the year 2021/2022, concluded a research project on the subject of societal benefits, carried out together with Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI). In the latter stages it also came to include the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Swedwise, an IT company. Planning of the project started as early as 2013; it was then that Sweden’s iron and steel industry affirmed its vision of contributing societal value in all perspectives, something that the project defined as moving towards,  and in the longer term reaching, all of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

The end product from the project is an Agenda 2030 Compass, based on the systems thinking in Agenda 2030, as well as knowledge about how the 17 indivisible Global Goals interact with one another. The Agenda 2030 Compass helps users to find societal valuable solutions that promote a number of the UN’s Global Goals. The compass also warns of conflicting Global Goals, where the users may happen to disadvantage certain Goals in their striving to achieve others. Read more about the research project and its results: Agenda 2030 Compass – a tool for navigating toward increased societal value

Technical area 86, Agenda 2030 Compass (TO 86) has been established to assist interested parties in contributing to the sustainable development of society. This is done through testing new product ideas, investments, strategies, reform proposals and such, with the aid of the Compass, against each one of the UN’s 17 Global Goals simultaneously.

During 2023, both external customers and actors close to Jernkontoret have ordered their own and joint runs on the Agenda 2030 Compass tool. Among other things, these runs have dealt with digitisation, electrification and replacing fossil coal with biochar in industrial processes. In 2024, there are orders for Agenda 2030 Compass runs about an attractiveness strategy linked to the supply of skills, as well as a run that will serve as a basis for the dual (sustainability) materiality analysis that that all major companies within the EU are obliged to report, but also test runs where municipalities and regions, trade unions and authorities want to learn more about the compass tool.

Committee meetings of this technical area are arranged about four times a year.

Committee Chairperson

Gert Nilson, Jernkontoret

Research Manager

Kristian Skånberg, Jernkontoret

Member companies

Höganäs AB, Höganäs

Co-opted members

SEI – Stockholm Environment Institute, Stockholm
Swedwise, Karlstad

Purpose and general focus of activities

To gather and share knowledge about how Agenda 2030 and the UN’s 17 Global Goals can be used strategically to make better informed decisions in general, and how using the Agenda 2030 Compass specifically can help actors with that. This is done by:

• Initiatives at Jernkontoret and/or initiatives taken together with members of TO 86 (or other technical areas), and/or initiatives together with external stakeholders which want to use the Agenda 2030 Compass.
• Analysing, documenting and strategically disseminating results from Compass-workshops, and where needed or requested carrying out in-depth studies.
• Training interested parties that wish to become licensed users of the Agenda 2030 Compass.
• Initiating or participating in research projects, where the Agenda 2030 Compass may constitute a key element or component depending on the nature of the project.
• Further developing the Agenda 2030 Compass tool components, database documentation, data interface, workshop methodology, reporting automation and other research related tasks. Such a research project runs during 2023–2024 and should result in a "contextmapper" to create opportunities to be able to run the sustainability compass on data that describes different kinds of contexts (e.g. countries).

Previously implemented studies have focused on enhancing the sustainability of a region’s innovation strategy, a municipal mobility plan, a company’s product development and a housing company’s city district building project.

Since the establishment of TO 86, the work of the technical area has focused on the electrification of society, the steel industry’s digitalisation, and development of single industrial towns. During 2022 and 2023, TO 86 will be working on completing and further advancing these studies as well as starting new ones.

Lessons learnt so far have been that to be able to achieve progress in meeting all 17 Global Goals, there is often a need for more co-operation partners, more transdisciplinary systems thinking, more intensified search for possible synergies, and a determination to re-examine existing solutions to avoid direct or indirect negative effects.  

How does one become a member of the technical area?

The committee of the technical area decides on the acceptance of new members. You are welcome to contact the technical area’s Research Manager if you are interested in participating or if you have questions about activities, membership fees etc.