Sustainable Public Procurement

Key Message

Enabling sustainable public procurement (SPP) in emerging and developing economies through targeted research, SPP preparedness assessments and pilot projects.

Sustainable Public Procurement

What's New in Sustainable Public Procurement?

Launch of the IISD/TERI report on the State of Play in Sustainable Public Procurement (PDF - 656 kb)
IISD, in partnership in The Energy Resource Institute, India completed, in May 2007, a global survey on SPP practices and identified conditions for enabling SPP initiatives in newly industrialized and developing economies.

This study identifies four international and 35 national programs on SPP and consulted with several leading SPP proponents at the national and global level.

The report also reviews the Agreement of Government Procurement of the World Trade Organization, selected regional and bilateral trade agreements and bilateral investment treaties, which include procurement provisions and selected national-legal SPP frameworks.

Governments are the largest consumers in an economy. The public sector on average spends 45 per cent to 65 per cent of their budgets on public procurement, which amounts to 13 per cent to 17 per cent of the GDP. If governments make a concerted effort to purchase environmentally- and socially-preferable products and services, their substantial buying power will drive the delivery of sustainable development policies and stimulate markets for sustainable products and services.

IISD is launching this project on SPP to:

research legal and institutional frameworks that govern public procurement at the international and national level;
identify best practice in SPP; and
launch subsequent country projects to engage with the public sector, their key suppliers and other stakeholders, to examine the finer details of national procurement policies and procedures and to develop blueprints for pilot SPP initiatives.

IISD country projects on Sustainable Public Procurement
Governments are the largest consumers in an economy- on average the public sector spends 45 per cent to 65 per cent of their budgets and 13 per cent to 17 per cent of their GDP on procurement. When governments make a concerted effort to purchase sustainable products and services, their substantial buying power has the potential to create and drive markets for sustainable production and consumption both nationally and internationally. This project endeavours to promote sustainable public procurement in emerging and developing economies.

The Sustainable Commodity Initiative (SCI)

The Sustainable Commodity Initiative was launched in 2003 through an IISD-UNCTAD Partnership and has provided a concrete vehicle for SMART project development and implementation. The SCI, now a partnership of IISD-UNCTAD-AidEnvironment and UNCTAD, aims to promote sustainable commodity production and trade by improving awareness of, learning between and appropriate policy responses to voluntary initiatives operative in the commodities sector. To see what the SCI is currently doing and learn more about voluntary initiatives operating in commodity supply chains, please visit the SCI Web site.

Key SCI projects:

Finance Alliance for Sustainable Trade (FAST)

The Finance Alliance for Sustainable Trade (FAST) is an association of socially oriented financial service providers and other stakeholders committed to promoting improved access to finance for producers of sustainable commodities. More specifically, FAST aims to improve producer access to "small and medium enterprise trade finance" by providing a central point of contact, cooperation and information between financial service providers, producers and related stakeholders in international supply chains. To become a member of FAST or learn more, visit the FAST Web site.

» Themes

» Initiatives

» Public Policy

» Standards and Voluntary Initiatives

» Financing

» Technical Assistance

» Sustainable Commodity Initiative

» Sustainable Public Procurement

Key Message