Rapid economic growth is a relatively recent phenomenon, which has been examined since the end of the 18th century. In the scientific literature researchers use the concept of “economic growth” and “economic development” when analyzing economic processes. “Economic growth”, as defined by Paul M. Romer occurs whenever people use resources and rearrange them in more valuable ways. Thus, economic growth means an increase in a real national income / national output. In contrast, economic development is an improvement of the quality of life and living standards, e.g. improvement of literacy, life expectancy, and approach to environmental issues. Economic development encircles a wider range of metrics than just gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, it is about actual standard of living, level of environmental standards, availability and quality of housing and other aspects. The article analyzes, compares and evaluates theories of economic growth and economic development in the context of sustainable development.

Green public procurement (GPP) is an instrument for public institutions that have made sustainable consumption and financial aids savings, particularly taking into consideration expenses of the total life cycle of the agreement, not just the procurement price. Municipalities are important to promotion of sustainable consumption through their positive effects on citizens and other stakeholders. The present paper analyses the contribution of municipalities of the Republic of Latvia in developing sustainable consumption through GPP. The aim of the paper is to explore the development of GPP in municipalities, analysing influencing factors. By analysing data from the Procurement Supervision Agency and the State Regional Development Agency, the proportion of GPP is explored. The paper includes data collected in a survey of municipalities of Latvia aiming to identify the main factors that promote the development of GPP and the ones that are obstacles for implementing the GPP. The conclusions show that GPP is a relatively new activity in Latvia, especially in relation to sustainable consumption. Analytical, graphic, statistical research methods as well as other qualitative and quantitative research methods have been used in the research.

Green public procurement (GPP) is an important tool and is used to reduce adverse environmental impacts caused by food production. To have a more detailed look at the application of GPP in Latvia, the authors screened 97 public tenders for supply of food products, documenting the choice of the green criteria. Only 15 % of the screened tender documents corresponded to the national GPP requirements. Only 4 % of the tender documents gave higher priority exclusively for organic products compared to products within national quality schemes or integrated pest management agriculture. The authors compared these findings with the opinions of environmental experts, GPP guidelines by the European Commission, and experience from other countries. The authors conclude that 1) self-reporting is not an appropriate method to measure the implementation level of GPP, and 2) having a large number of criteria without clear goals can lead to using the easiest, but least environmentally beneficial options, and 3) for some tenders complying with national GPP, the environmental benefits may be unclear.

In 2019, the European Commission (EC) issued a communication on the European Green Deal (EGD), which marked a major transformation of the national economy to ensure a Europe neutral in 2050. One of the biggest challenges today is climate change, which is leading to environmental problems. To reduce these threats and risks to the world and humanity, the UN adopted 2015 the Paris Agreement, the United Nations (UN) Framework Convention on Climate Change, which sets out actions to reduce the effects of climate change. In 2019, the EC issued a statement stating that the European Union (EU) would be the first climate-neutral part of the world in 2050. To achieve this goal, activities, and goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 55% by 2030 are set within the framework of the EGD. Transformation processes will be a comprehensive change in all sectors of the tangible economy, making the EU’s economy competitive, and innovative, promoting resource efficiency, moving to a clean, circular economy and halting climate change, preventing biodiversity loss, and reducing pollution. The article analyzes the goals and significance of the EGD toward a climate-neutral Europe. The aim of the article is to analyze the planned activities of the EGD, to evaluate the involvement of the state and society in achieving these goals. Keywords: green deal, climate-neutral Europe, priorities

Green public procurement (GPP) is a process whereby public and municipal authorities seek to procure goods and services with the lowest environmental impact throughout their entire life cycle, taking into account also the life cycle costs compared to products with the same primary function. GPP can reduce not only the environmental impact, but also promote social benefits and budget savings. The requirements for GPP and the procedure for its application in Latvia are determined by governmental regulations. That requires mandatory application of the GPP to seven groups of goods and services, among them food and catering services.

Sustainability and sustainable development have become important concepts and goals across science and society. Sustainability, connected to desirable long-term conditions, is an inherently applied in public sector, public procurements. Every year the European Union (EU) Member States collectively spend around 14% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on public procurement. In Latvia, public procurement accounts for 17% of GDP. The review of the new public procurement directives and their transposition process in Latvia plans to show new opportunities for green public procurement (GPP) application: the contracting authority will be able to reject, for example, an abnormally low bid, include environmental management system requirements in the selection criteria, use life cycle costing criteria, etc. GPP is the systematic integration of environmental criteria into all activities related to the procurement of goods or services, from the identification of needs, the development of appropriate specifications and evaluation procedures, to the monitoring of the results achieved. The aim of the work is to analyse sustainability theory and explore the application of GPP to improve the quality of GPP through sustainability. With a view to increasing sustainable consumption over the last 25 years, several initiatives have been developed. The United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development developed the Concept of Sustainable Development "Our Common Future (1987)", that was widely used in the context of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Sustainable development concept was defined at the international event in 1995 in Oslo "use of goods and services that respond to basic needs and bring a better quality of life, while minimizing the use of natural resources, toxic materials and emissions of waste and pollutants over the life cycle, so as not to jeopardize the needs of future generations" (Giulio, Fischer, et al., 2014). The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) made "green growth" its 2011 slogan (Lorek, Spangenberg, 2014). The green economy became a pillar of major European and international strategies: most notably in the Europe 2020 strategy adopted in 2010 by the EU to drive sustainable growth, and in the Rio+20 outcome. The incentive to use GPP is based on the fact that in many countries public sector spending amounts to a significant part of the economy, and that this purchasing power can be used to influence production and consumption to achieve desired reductions on environmental impact (Lundberg, S., Marklund, P.O., Strömbäck, E., Sundstrom, D., 2015). When public authorities go green, they make an invaluable contribution to environmental protection and sustainable development, setting a trend that often convinces other to follow suit (Day, 2005). The practice amounts to significant expenditure, excluding utilities and defence, across Europe, comprising 13% of European GDP in 2015 (Commission, 2016). In the last decade, the use of environmental criteria in public tenders has been increasing defusing (Testa, F., Iraldo, F., Frey, M., Daddi, T., 2016). The implementation of GPP is covering new sector in recent years, identifying new practices (Cheng, W., Apolloni, A., D'Amato, A., Zhu, Q., 2018). The challenges that the European municipalities face on a path towards sustainability were outlined, along with the undertaking of sustainable procurement and the active promoton of sustainable production and consumption, particularly, eco- labelled, organic, ethical and fair-trade products (Belgica, P.B., Jose, B.C.M., 2016). Keywords: sustainability, green procurement, sustainable theory

Public procurement plays an important role in the market by making up 14% of the Gross Domestic Product in the European Union, therefore it is seen as an important instrument to promote such products and services that better meet society’s demands, for example, sustainability. Starting from 2015, circularity is an important aspect of sustainability. Furniture is among the product groups with a significant impact on the material footprint, therefore approaches to increase material efficiency and circularity are of high value. With this research, the authors investigate the market’s maturity, i.e. the readiness of suppliers to offer circular furniture and services, as well as the readiness of municipalities to uptake it. 20 companies and 27 municipalities took part in the survey. Results show that the surveyed companies currently are more ready to offer more circular products and services than municipalities require in the procurement tenders. Most surveyed municipalities are maintaining and repairing the furniture by themselves that is a circular approach but without outsourcing. The market consultation before the tendering could help to understand the market abilities better and lead to more circular purchasing contracts. This is an important task considering the importance of public procurement in promoting a circular economy.

Green public procurement (GPP) is a mean of saving up finances for public institutions, especially taking into consideration not only procurement price but also total expenses of the contract lifecycle. In Latvia the first Electronic Procurement System (EPS) was established in 2005, and was the first such procurement system in the Baltic States. Initially, it only acted as an e-Procurement system in which public institutions can purchase standard goods and services. The aim of the paper is to explore the proportion of applied GPP of total procurement in EPS in Latvia in the period from 2015 to 2017, and to analyze how the aims of the proportion of GPP are achieved. A complete transition to e-Procurement will reduce both administrative costs and significant savings for the state budget. GPP proportion in procurement made within the EPS in 2015 was 9%, in 2016 -8%, but in 2017 -19.10%, which means that GPP a substantial increase.