Green public procurement and multiple environmental objectives

Sofia Lundberg () and Per-Olov Marklund ()
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Sofia Lundberg: Umeå School of Business and Economics at Umeå University
Per-Olov Marklund: The National Institute of Economic Research (NIER)

Economia e Politica Industriale: Journal of Industrial and Business Economics, 2018, vol. 45, issue 1, No 4, 37-53

Abstract: Abstract Policy makers can employ different instruments to address environmental policy objectives, and the guiding principles for a consistent system of environmental policy are (1) the policies should be effective, (2) there should be one objective per instrument, and (3) multiple objectives and multiple policy instruments must be mutually independent of each other. This paper evaluates these three principles for green public procurement (GPP). As an illustrative example, the analysis refers to the Swedish policy of using public purchase of organic foods as a policy instrument to increase the certified organic agricultural area as a share of the total agricultural area. Our analysis shows that GPP fails to satisfy principles (1) and (3), and the only way to satisfy principle (2) is then to have just one objective with the procurement, i.e., to run the operations. GPP might still have a positive environmental impact, but, if applied, the procuring authority has to be very specific with the one-to-one matching of criterion and objective.

Keywords: Environmental policy; Organic food; Public contracts; Public procurement; Purchasing; Sustainable procurement; Tinbergen rule (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D44 H57 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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DOI: 10.1007/s40812-017-0085-6

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