Green Public Procurement in Mission-Orientated Innovation Systems: Leveraging Voluntary Standards to Improve Sustainability Performance of Municipalities

Anne Rainville
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Anne Rainville: Innovation Studies, Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University, 3508 TC Utrecht, The Netherlands

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 14, 1-22

Abstract: Mission-oriented approaches such as green public procurement (GPP) are emerging as popular solutions for governments to tackle contemporary sustainability challenges. Voluntary standards are instruments that can be used in GPP to drive innovation toward sustainability goals. However, there exists a lack of understanding of how to theoretically situate and practically execute GPP and voluntary standards within missions-oriented innovation systems (MIS). To address this research gap, this paper investigates how voluntary standards can be used to help formulate and achieve missions for sustainable urban development (SUD) at the municipal level, followed by what role green public procurement can play in this process. To do so, it establishes a first theoretical synthesis of GPP and MIS. Next, focusing on the Municipality of Amsterdam, it conducts an empirical investigation of 95 SUD projects, of which 55 were public tender projects (in which the municipality is the landowner) and 40 were non-public tender projects (in which a private entity is the landowner), supplemented by stakeholder interviews. Based on this, it (1) conceptualizes six sustainability ambitions as missions and examines each for their formulation in terms of targets and associated standards (problem-solution diagnosis), and (2) it maps the various actors engaged in the process of implementing these missions through SUD projects, defining their positions and interrelations within the MIS at the municipal level (structural analysis). Conclusions and reflections are made regarding the relationship between changing standards and regulations over time, the potential for GPP to increase progress toward missions via use of voluntary standards in public tenders. Until programmatic approaches to measuring progress toward missions are fully implemented, the presence of voluntary standards is suggested as a potential metric.

Keywords: green public procurement; sustainable public procurement; mission-orientated innovation systems; green; ecolabels; voluntary standards; emissions; environmental; implementation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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