Baseline Review Report: Measuring and Communicating the Benefits of Sustainable Public Procurement (SPP)

This baseline review is intended to inform an ongoing project sponsored by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in the framework of the 10YFP SPP Programme. As one of several activities under the 10YFP SPP programme, this project is supported by the “2B: Measurement and Communication of Sustainable Public Procurement Benefits” working group. The hypothesis driving the 2B working group is: SPP practices will increase if there is a reliable way of measuring and communicating the sustainability benefits of SPP programmes. The goal of the project is to lay a solid foundation for measuring SPP benefits. The Sustainable Purchasing Leadership Council (SPLC) and Industrial Economics, Inc. (IEc) are leading this project, with support from the UNEP 10YFP Programme Secretariat and the Korea Environmental Industry & Technology Institute (KEITI). The goal of the baseline review presented in this report is to: 1. Review the existing methodologies and literature on measuring SPP benefits that could be applied to the current project. 2. Identify the major gaps and inconsistencies in the existing approaches. 3. Enable a baseline understanding for the community of professionals working on SPP of the existing approaches for measuring SPP benefits and the gaps that need to be filled to advance the field. The Baseline Report incorporates comments and suggestions received from working group 2B members, 10YFP Secretariat, SPLC staff, working group 2A leaders, and from the participants of the in-person workshop “Measuring and Communicating the Benefits of Sustainable Public Procurement” organized on January 14, 2015 in Washington, DC.