UNEP’s Sustainable Public Procurement Implementation Guidelines, available in French, Spanish, Russian and English, is one of the key references for greening economies, and it has been adapted for use by some states, such as Mongolia. ICLEI’s Procura+ Manual became a benchmark that has been customized by several regions – for instance for Brazil. Brazil also benefits from a guide by the Fundação Getulio Vargas (Getulio Vargas Foundation – FGV), the handbook Compra sustentável, which is available in Portuguese and English, and a constantly updated governmental guide, the Guia Nacional. The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) has been working on SPP across the Global South, including in Latin America and the Caribbean. For the latter, the IISD’s report, Implementando compras públicas estratégicas en América Latina y el Caribe, in Spanish, introduces a framework for reform in public procurement. In 2020 the Economist Intelligence Unit published an essay entitled ‘The future of public spending’, which makes reference to the SDGs and recommends tools and practices. Most of the available references are framed within a narrow concept of sustainability, tailor-made by and for the private sector, but they provide implementation guidelines that are rather useful.
New experiences are constantly uploaded to the One Planet network, and to the Sustainable Procurement Platform managed by ICLEI. Interested parties can join the One Planet network for free, and upload and learn from the experience of others across the world, in multiple languages.
For a call for public procurement policy to be used as a strategic lever to accelerate gender-inclusive economic growth, produced as part of the Gender and Growth Initiative at Chatham House, see Gender-smart Procurement: Policies for Driving Change.
