Sustainable Public Procurement: International Experience

Abstract

Sustainable public procurement (SPP) is a process of purchasing goods, services, works and utilities for public needs in a way that ensures benefits not only to the organization, but also to society and the economy, whilst minimizes damage to the environment. SPP can be part of the overall mechanism of sustainable development. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how SPP can contribute to sustainable development, what is the legal framework for it, what factors promote and inhibit SPP, how SPP can be implemented in practice. By analyzing regulatory legal acts, the international SPP experience, a large body of international academic research and reports of international organizations involved in the promotion of SPP, we advance two key features that make public procurement an effective mechanism of sustainable development: (1) the scale of public procurement and (2) the power and authority of procurement bodies. We distinguish between several different schemes of legal support of SPP. The main drivers of SPP are leadership, clarity of strategies and plans that articulate SPP goals, the legislative support of the SPP process, and the information support of procurement specialists. Our review of international experience in SPP is expected to contribute to a more vigorous implementation of SPP by procurement authorities.