In my experience, what is often missing between intent and action is the knowledge and the means to actually change the way we do business or make consumer decisions.

Most people - including business leaders - want a healthy future for their children.

When the International Trade Centre, the agency I head, works with German electronics giant Bosch to help Kenyan food processing companies boost their productivity and export competitiveness, we may well be creating future customers for Bosch washing machines.

Companies that operate across borders have the expertise SMEs need. Who better to help smallholder farmers navigate complex sustainability standards than the companies who demand - or set - them?

Entrepreneurs - both women and men - need equal and fair access to finance - to create new businesses, to reach to new markets, and to adapt to climate change.

Without action to de-carbonize our economies, unchecked climate change threatens to batter lives and economies around the world, hitting the poorest people hardest.

Full social and political engagement is impossible without economic empowerment, a point that is as true for women as it is for young people of either gender.

Entrepreneurship is one of the most important drivers for job creation. Moreover, social entrepreneurship offers not only a path for young people to transform their own lives, but also a way to empower others.

It is no coincidence that in the wake of the Arab Spring, investment in youth-related initiatives, especially related to employment, has increased sharply.

Creating large numbers of decent jobs for young people is critical for achieving overall development objectives, from poverty reduction to better health and education.

While tourism is often resource-intensive, it is a major driver of poverty reduction in developing countries.

The tourism industry has considerable potential to be a sustainability role model in its role as a buyer of goods and other services, from building materials and green construction standards to farm produce.

Sustainable production and consumption matter immensely to the people I meet every day as head of the International Trade Centre, which works with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to help them boost growth and job creation by improving their competitiveness and connecting to international markets.

Everything we produce and consume has an impact on the environment, on social fabrics, and on the economy. This impact can be positive or negative and, frequently, some combination of the two.

In landlocked developing countries, geographical barriers to markets are unnecessarily accompanied by virtual ones: their e-connectivity rates are among the world's lowest.

Improving SME productivity translates into more and better paying jobs, distributed across less fortunate sections of the economy.

Large companies everywhere tend to be more productive than small ones. But the gap in productivity is far wider in developing countries.

Jobs are the main channel through which people share in - or are left out of - economic growth.

International consumers can rest assured that their quinoa purchases have benefited some of Latin America's poorest people, together with their families.

In the ten years leading up to 2013, quinoa prices nearly tripled on the back of skyrocketing international demand for the latest 'superfood'. The grain had traditionally been cultivated in the high Andean plateau, principally for household consumption. But as prices rose, farmers' incentive to sell it as a cash crop grew.

There is no intrinsic reason African countries should be importing, rather than exporting, basic staples like rice or higher value products like frozen chicken, cooking oil, or instant noodles.

Many African smallholder farmers did not share in the 'green revolution' productivity gains driven by modern seeds and techniques, irrigation, and greater fertilizer use in Asia and Latin America in the 1960s.

In their pursuit of growth and diversification, African economies should consider transforming the discourse from a focus on industrialisation to a broader one centred on value addition in agriculture, manufacturing, and services.

Governments around the world are looking for economic growth and job creation. African economies are no exception, with increasing recognition that growth has to be built on a more diversified economic structure in order to make a lasting contribution to development.