When one talks of indicators, the first that comes
across our mind is, of course, Gross Domestic Products (GDP), which has charmed
eyeballs of millions of people across the world. Its movement is tracked 24x7
and thousands are employed to measure its movement to the nearest second digit
after decimal. Such is its stimulus that politicians, economists, corporates,
bankers et al take pride in predicting it (and never forget to take credit for
the same!). Though GDP remains on top of the list of indicators in people’s
minds, its continued dominance is threatened in a resource-constrained and environmentally-challenged
world we live in today. Its capacity to
deliver on the claimed social and
economic benefits trickling to society has
increasingly been questioned in recent time.
With the evidences of limitation of economic growth
measured in terms of GDP (someone called it Grossly Distorted Picture) becoming
more and more apparent, the focus is gradually shifting to more broad based development
that attaches equal weight to people and planet. The effective translation of
sustainability goals into innovative policy processes still remains a matter of
debate, even at experimentation stage, as new policy initiatives are
hypothesized, tested and implemented across the world. One such policy that promotes sustainable
consumption and production pattern and simultaneously helps nations in
achieving their developmental goal is Sustainable Public Procurement (SPP). It has
significant potential for developing and poor nations, where more consumption
of resources is predicted in future to meet developmental aspirations of their
people. This realization has led many
developing nations such as China, Thailand and Indonesia in Asia; Chile, Brazil
and Uruguay in South America; Tunisia, South Africa in Africa etc. to embrace
SPP policy wholeheartedly. Many more countries from around the globe are
seriously looking at this option and waiting to climb on the SPP bandwagon.
Therefore, it has become quintessential to envision a dashboard of indicators not
only to evaluate and communicate progress on the stated objectives of SPP policy
but also to identify hotspots that need attention.
An indicator
can assist in actual assessment, management and monitoring of impacts of SPP
policy on sustainability goals, as well as in reporting the actual performance
of decentralized units within a nation. Further, lack of indicators on sustainable
procurement could be a major problem, hindering efforts in assimilating
sustainability initiatives within a nation. Therefore, developing an
evidence-based approach for monitoring effectiveness/performance of sustainable
public procurement is considered essential to make sure that the sustainability
objectives are being achieved.
Many countries and organizations have already made
attempts to develop indicators on SPP and many others are in the process of
refining already developed indicators based on past experiences. In a recently
concluded workshop on “Indicators for Resource Efficient Green Asia”, organized
by UNEP in Beijing in September 2013, policy makers, practitioner, and
researchers had gathered to discuss development of indicators to measure
progress on Sustainable Consumption & Production (SCP) policy adopted by
countries in this region. The discussion focused on finding that elusive
indicator that embodies the characteristics, simplicity and robustness of GDP
and at the same time measures the tangible and intangible impacts of SCP
policy. The workshop brought forth more than ten headline indicators. Though
the final decision on these indicators will be taken later by technical
committee of Asia-Pacific Roundtable on SCP, ten is a fairly large number to begin
with. I am sure as the concept of SCP itself matures over a period of time, we
will have indicators on SCP that will match the features of GDP as indicator.
Take the case
of tenders. The related indicator on SPP developed till now has focused on
measuring percentage of green tenders in terms of numbers and value out of
total numbers/value of tenders in measurement period. While some countries have focused on tender
the others have focused on finalized contracts. This is an important and very
fine differentiation that needs to be debated. Actually, it really depends on
what do we want to measure – intent or outcome? When we integrate environmental
criteria in tenders, it shows our intent
of buying greener and resource efficient products and services. But unless the
tenders materializes into contracts, which happens many times, it will not give
us the desired outcome. Also, sometime
a tender may contain several products and green criteria may apply only to some
of them. In such situation, if indicator is based on number of tenders, it is
likely to throw us inflated level of SPP penetration. On the flip side, an
indicator based on tenders also has some advantages. The main advantage of
monitoring tenders is that they can be tracked more easily than contracts, as
all the information is found in the tender itself and does not require data
input from different people or from suppliers.
Another
issue, which is equally important for developing indicator, is need to track
and/or gather information from different data sources to measure level of SPP.
Survey, as a data source, has several disadvantages such as the fact that they
are time consuming, have poor response rate and so on But they can raise
awareness about SPP program among stakeholders. However, if data is centrally
available, which is now possible through central e-procurement system, it is
very easy to track information in much more reliable and faster way.
As many
countries strive to develop their own indicator on SPP, it is time we focus on
having a common indicator on SPP. Ultimately, having a common indicator on SPP
for a country or region will depend on how much coherence exists in policy
objectives pursued by different entities within a country and region.
Therefore, in order to have common indicator, the primary objective of a region
shall be to first develop coherent policy across nations in region. This is not
a small task, but I can see some positive movement in ASEAN countries, who
recently agreed to pursue common SCP objectives. EU nations already have common
guidelines on GPP. These developments have kept my hopes alive for having a
global indicator on SPP!
