Welcome
to the Environmentally and
Socially Responsible Procurement Working Group
Why is
it necessary/advantageous?
The Interagency Working Group strongly believes
that procurement is a crucial tool to reach a
truly sustainable development. The United Nations,
including its many affiliated agencies, represents
a vast global market for suppliers of virtually
all types of goods and services. During 2000,
the procurement of goods and professional services,
under grants from all sources of funding, was
over US$3 billion dollars for almost all types
of goods and services. The estimated value of
business opportunities linked to UN direct and
indirect spending is US$ 30 billion/year. Procurement
by the UN system in 2000 was 59% from developed
countries, and 37% from developing countries.
This figures give an idea of how
important the impact of a joint procurement of
UN and MDBs initiative could be if addressed towards
the goal of sustainable development. Sustainable
procurement can produce measurable results and
really impact the market only if integrated at
large scale from finance to industrial development
to peace operations as part of a comprehensive
strategy for sustainable development.
Integrating sustainability in procurement
practices is not an issue for development practitioners
only. The principles of sustainable development
and the need to support a sustainable economy
require that, at the same time as creating a demand
for sustainable products and services, the legal
and logistic framework are put in place for companies
to deliver the services.
Why are
international organisations interested in adopting
sustainable procurement? Individual action is not effective.
The interagency group believes that a vast partnership
for the adoption of sustainable procurement will
give a visible and tangible signal to society
and to the market of the intention they have to
implement sustainable development starting from
their own operations.
International agencies have to improve
their own internal and project management to be
able to better face the immense challenges of
sustainable development. Sustainable procurement
as part of a general environmental system or sustainability
management is key. Sustainable procurement for
its environmental and social factor will lead
to an improved and more rationale management of
the agencies' programmes and projects.
Who is
the target audience of the site? This site is designed for procurement
practitioners especially within UN and MDBs to
be informed and co-ordinate their efforts towards
the implementation of Sustainable Procurement
practices.
It provides comparable information about what
each of the organisations is doing on sustainable
procurement in an homogeneous format. The links
in the site refer directly to the procurement
pages of each organisation.
It encourages partnerships among interested
agencies on specific projects.
It facilitates experiences and ideas exchange
through the Forum.
It will promote transparency by publishing
the results of the various assessment studies
carried out about procurement practices and
reform within the UN and MDB
It will link to a database containing information
on various international initiatives for the
identification of sustainable products.
