The world is increasingly faced with the challenges stemming from the need to sustain an expanding global population while simultaneously addressing the environmental pressures that could threaten our ability to accomplish this. Green growth has emerged as a strategy to balance the historically divergent priorities of achieving economic growth and social development without putting at risk the environmental systems and natural capital we rely so heavily upon. This approach emphasizes the environmental and economic gains achieved by reducing inefficiencies in the management of resources and the stimulation of new sources of activity through innovation and green market growth.
Within the green growth framework, public procurement serves as a key policy tool for governments to drive the agenda forward and achieve shifts in market practices by leveraging its significant purchasing power and regulatory influence. A key to achieving value-added green growth will come from boosting innovation so as to overcome inefficient patterns of the past and create new markets for the future. Government procurement must be considered an essential demand-side strategy for incentivizing and incubating innovation for green growth.
The content of this paper is taken from a larger study that is being undertaken at the level of a Partnership for Procurement and Green Growth, coordinated by the International Institute for Sustainable Development and supported by the Global Green Growth Forum. The paper provides a brief discussion on the role of procurement within the green growth paradigm, where an introduction to key concepts is followed by feature case studies that present the varying experiences of industry and the public sector in applying procurement to achieve green growth aims. Finally, the paper concludes by offering observations on possible implications for policy and areas where further investigation is required.