Abstract
Strategic objectives in public procurement, such as environmental or social considerations, are being increasingly referred to under the umbrella term of sustainable public procurement (SPP). The concept of sustainability is intrinsically multidimensional, encompassing environmental, social, and economic aspects. However, the existing literature on SPP highlights the generalization that the regulation and practices of public procurement are biased toward the environmental dimension. There is conflicting evidence from countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) that calls for further investigation. Analyzing how SPP is actually constituted in SSA and contrasting it with the situation in the European Union (EU), as a spotlight on the Global South and North, contributes to a better understanding of sustainability in public procurement. The comparative analysis will help with understanding processes related to the integration or disintegration of sustainability dimensions in SPP. Our results indicate a contrary orientation on the environmental and the social dimensions in the EU and SSA. Although there is no sign of a comprehensive integration of all dimensions in SPP, there are developments toward the integration of the ‘missing’ dimension in the respective regional setting. Thus, at the moment, achieving a multidimensional implementation of SPP appears to be more a matter of expanding SPP practices of the ‘missing’ dimension than of pushing for integrated concepts.
Highlights
How Multidimensional Is Sustainability in Public Procurement?At the international level, the Brundtland Report highlighted in 1987 the three-dimensional aspect of sustainability [1]
The role that cities have played in pushing forward the debate on sustainable public procurement (SPP), especially within the European Union (EU), has often been overlooked, yet our analysis reveals that municipalities have played a fundamental role in pushing forward the boundaries of SPP
Biases within the social dimension of sustainability are often based on specific national aspects that can be subsumed within the sustainability discourse but do not necessarily originate from it, such as the redress of past injustices in many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) or the social consideration of child labor along international value chains by many German municipalities
Summary
The Brundtland Report highlighted in 1987 the three-dimensional aspect of sustainability [1]. Approaches to social aspects in public procurement in SSA as well as in the EU have a domestic focus in common, where the effects of SPP are targeting, for example, labor rights in the national context. Apart from the different national starting points of SPP, which lead to a concentration on specific aspects within SPP, the overall compatibility and the potential and limits of synergies between different dimensions has to be questioned and analyzed in order to assess the coherence of SPP in regard to a multidimensional concept of sustainability This partly theoretical discourse has implications for the practical implementation of SPP, as answers to these questions might help identify entry points for SPP and ways forward to further and maybe more comprehensively integrate environmental and social considerations into public procurement.
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