It’s impossible to walk around the neighborhoods of Otemachi and Marunouchi (Tokyo’s main financial district) these days without noticing be-suited businessmen wearing little round lapel pins like this one:

These colorful pins represent the 17 sustainable development goals established by the United Nations in 2015 as a “blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future” for the world.

Here is the full list of the UN’s sustainable development goals accompanied by an explanatory video.

This sudden adoption of a new global trend is not an uncommon phenomenon in Japan, where nothing happens for ages and then suddenly it seems like every corporation is jumping on the bandwagon for fear of being left behind.

European corporations are arguably leading the way in the sustainability principles. Sustainable development has been on the strategic agenda of many European corporations for over a decade. (See my recent piece on Unilever for one example).

Yet I’m not criticizing Japan’s migration of mindshare en masse toward the SDGs because these represent worthwhile goals toward preserving the planet and ultimately saving humanity. Better late than never. And albeit perhaps only on the surface for now, such widespread adoption of sustainability principles by corporate Japan is heartening.

I predict the emergence of sustainable impact funds in Japan in the not-too-distant future (foreshadowing alert).