My dear colleague Dr Marta Andrecka is organising an interesting conference on sustainability and corporate social responsibility issues in public purchasing in Copenhagen in May. I am sorry to miss the conference due to other commitments, and I will look forward to hear about the discussions. If you are interested, here are some additional details:
The Centre for Enterprise Liability (CEVIA) of the University of Copenhagen is pleased to invite you to the International Conference "Procurement beyond price: Sustainability and CSR in public purchasing", which will take place on 4-5 May 2017 at the Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen. The conference will bring together researchers from the CSR Legal Research Network, the SMART project and other renowned specialists to discuss timely developments relating to the field of procurement, sustainability and CSR.
The global value of public procurement spending is enormous. Just the OECD countries alone spend a total of €1,000 billion per year. In the EU over 250,000 public authorities each year spend around 14-19% of GDP on the purchase of services, works and supplies. In many sectors such as energy, transport, waste management, social protection and the provision of health or education services, public authorities are the principal buyers. Within specific industry sectors, the sheer scale of public procurement spending and their supplier selection decisions, can literally create and shape a market and impact lives of citizens across the country at large.
These days, public procurement is no longer just about buying the cheapest possible supplies or services. Instead, the new sustainable procurement is understood as a process whereby organizations meet their needs for goods, services, works and utilities in a way that achieves value for money on a lifetime basis in terms of generating benefits not only to the organization, but also to society and the economy, whilst minimizing damage to the environment. The sustainability agenda has been broadly discussed by the European Union in regards to promotion of green and socially conscious governmental contracting. However, due to deficiency in regulating legislation, administrative pressures and lack of training, sustainable procurement methodology, coupled with the lack of accountability on CSR policies, is not used as often as desired.
Topics to be covered include:
- Different faces of sustainable procurement and successful case studies
- What type of social considerations are relevant for procurement and how to include them
- Relevance of Human Rights in procurement
- What are the challenges, pitfalls and risks when considering CSR and other sustainability concerns in procurement
For a preliminary programme and registration details, see http://jura.ku.dk/virksomhedsansvar/english/calendar/procurement-beyond-price/