The United Nations Development Account (UNDA) project “Enhancing sustainable public procurement for the regional transition to inclusive green economy in Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia (EECCA)” – led by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) with support from the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and the Green Growth Knowledge Partnership (GGKP) – aims to strengthen the capacity of countries and businesses to respond to public tenders with sustainability criteria.
Public procurement offers a largely untapped opportunity to drive businesses and domestic markets towards innovation and increased sustainability.
Shifting that spending towards more sustainable goods and services can generate positive social, environmental and economic results such as poverty reduction, improved equity, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, green jobs, and increased energy and resource efficiency. Sustainable public procurement is thus emerging as key policy instrument to support sustainable development and leverage an inclusive green economy transition.
The three-year project (2018-2021) aims to:
- Strengthen the capacity of selected countries in the EECCA region on sustainable public procurement and strengthen the capacity of businesses to respond to public tenders with sustainability criteria
- Improve capacity of policymakers to design and adopt policies, regulations and procedures for sustainable public procurement practices
- Enhance capacity of the business sector in the project countries to comply with sustainable public procurement regulations and procedures and sustainability criteria
The target countries for the project are Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan in Central Asia, as well as Belarus, Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova in Eastern Europe.
The project builds on regional policy dialogue, helping to foster the transition to a green economy through the promotion of regional knowledge exchanges, exchange of best practices in the implementation of sustainable public procurement and green economy commitments under the Batumi Initiative on Green Economy and the establishment of regional expert networks.
In order to highlight and disseminate the results and achievement in the beneficiary countries, UNEP cooperate with Information Center “Green Dossier” (Ukraine) to develop a report and infographics on progress in SPP and eco-labelling, and present the success stories from the countries. “Green Dossier” is also responsible for organizing the 2nd Pan-European Regional Workshop on SPP and eco-labelling. “Green Dossier” works closely with UNEP, its project partners (GGKP, UNECE) and national partners.
Public spending has tremendous purchasing power – accounting for an average of 12% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in OECD countries and up to 30% in other countries. Sustainable Public Procurement (SPP) is defined as a “process whereby public organizations meet their needs for goods, services, works and utilities in a way that achieves value for money on a whole life cycle basis in terms of generating benefits not only to the organization, but also to society and the economy, whilst significantly reducing negative impacts on the environment”. Shifting public spending towards more sustainable goods and services not only reduces the environmental footprint of procuring entities, but also stimulates businesses to innovate, promote circularity and improve the social and environmental performance of their products and services. SPP is thus emerging as key policy instrument to support sustainable development and leverage an inclusive green economy transition.
