Welcome
to the Environmentally and
Socially Responsible Procurement Working Group
What is sustainable
procurement?
Sustainable development is not only about environment,
it also requires the respect of the fundamental
rights of people and labour rights and it has
to deliver progress in the economy. In the review
of our strategy for sustainable development we
should intensify our efforts towards the creation
of a life cycle economy and we can do that only
if we work together on the demand side as intensively
as on the production side.
The
multilateral development banks (MDBs), United
Nations (UN) organisations, and a variety of non
governmental organisations decided to move in
this direction and created in December 2001 the
Interagency Sustainable Procurement Group. The
objectives of the group are:
to share organisations' experiences to date
on sustainable procurement and receive feedback
on strategies under development
identify new sustainable procurement partners
in developing and developed countries
encourage ownership of sustainable procurement
by institutions' procurement departments
develop a plan of action for sustainable procurement
particularly focussed on five themes:
information exchange;
development of joint procurement documents
(e.g., product standards and best practice/convergence);
What is sustainable
procurement? 
