Key factors hindering sustainable procurement in the Brazilian public sector: A Delphi study

Abstract

The modern lifestyle has resulted in a gradual dismantling of the vital services offered by nature, putting human existence at risk. In this sense, it is understood as a Public Administration responsibility the active participation in the promotion of sustainable consumption and production strategies, not only through public policies implementation, but also through its abundant purchasing power. Thus, the present investigation aims to identify and classify the main barriers that have hampered the massive application of sustainable public procurement (SPP) in Brazil. The proposed objective was achieved through a Delphi study. A panel of experts identified 32 main obstacles for SPP implementation, which were subsequently ranked according to a five-point Likert scale. The results suggest that, among all the barriers identified, 10 are the leading factors that hinder the implementation of SPPs in the Brazilian public sector. The findings of this paper, therefore, provide a valuable reference for experts and practitioners in the selection of the obstacles that must be firstly overcome to stimulate the application of SPPs.

Municipal Green Purchasing in Mexico: Policy Adoption and Implementation Success

“…Most of the extant research on GPP has been conducted in developed countries such as Sweden, United Kingdom, Spain, The Netherlands, USA, Australia, Norway, Denmark, Germany, and Canada [15]. In terms of developing countries, apart from Latin America, there are studies in Africa [34], Ghana [35], India [36], Pakistan [37], South Africa [38], and Thailand [39]; however, most of them have been performed in China [40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47] and Nigeria [48][49][50].…”

“…In 2015, Kleine and Brightwell [51] reported an analysis of the Brazilian school meals policy, which supports organic farms and provides meals to 43 million Brazilian children, showing the potential that public purchases have to stimulate sustainable agriculture. Three articles investigated key factors hindering GPP [15,52,53]. Finally, Novaes das Virgens, Andrade, and Hidalgo [54] analyzed the carbon footprint of public agencies, finding that GPP can be used to reduce up to 83 percent of the CO 2 emissions generated by the government.…”

“…Second, key drivers of GPP include personnel skills, green consciousness, clarity and specificity of policies, and environmentally friendly products/vendors information [45]. Third, the barriers to adoption of GPP can be grouped by institutional aspects (including culture, the lack of a relevant legal framework, lack of political will, lack of training and employee competences, stakeholder pressures, and the lack of long-term planning), issues related to the improvement of informational mechanisms (poor monitoring and inspection systems, inadequate policy measures, limited knowledge about the social and environmental impacts), the ability to make decisions in public managers (limited capacity of stakeholders, budget constraints, and lack of top management support), and market conditions and perceptions (unavailability of green products, the relative higher costs/prices of the sustainable options, the perception that sustainable items can restrict competition) [15,35,37,48,52,53].…”

“…Mexico provides an especially favorable setting for this study, where government procurement at all levels amounts to $193.7 billion USD of goods and services annually, amounting to approximately 23.5 percent of Mexico's country-level GDP [14] compared to a range of 8% to 25% of the GDP in other OECD countries [15]. Purchased items include vehicle fleets, construction materials, chemicals, electronics, and office materials, all of which contribute to global climate change and other environmental concerns throughout the lifecycle of these products.…”

“…Developing an accurate predictive model that incorporates these measures is particularly important in evaluating the potentially unintended consequences of policy interventions, such as the conflicts between the priorities of the purchasing process, the lack of clear organizational guidelines, the slow and inefficient dissemination of GPP knowledge [15].…”