Climate Responsive Procurement

Goal 13 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) calls for urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. SDG 13 is critical as it underpins many of the other SDGs. Much of the related work so far has focused on the need for climate responsiveness and the reporting of corporate social responsibility (CSR). There is a notable gap in the literature on how governments and businesses embed their climate responsive policies into their financial management systems. In particular, this research examines UK procurement processes.

The gold standard internationally for assessing public financial management systems is the Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) framework. So far there have been over 600 assessments in 153 countries. The PEFA secretariat has developed a module on climate responsiveness.

We will use the new framework to assess the climate responsiveness of the procurement processes in the UK. Our work will address an empirical problem relating to the implementation of climate responsive procurement that currently has no adequate theory or investigative methodology. Our research team is interdisciplinary and is comprised of four academics from De Montfort University and Edinburgh Napier University.

We will first perform a pilot study to examine the procurement processes for two local authorities and two businesses. We will cover the regions of Scotland and England as each has their own procurement laws. For our pilot study we will use focus groups and semi-structured interviews.

This is a seed-corn project to inform the debate in relation to implementing the environmental policies for organisations across both developed countries and developing countries. The research enabled by the grant would be expanded to provide coverage across a larger number of countries. It will form the basis for subsequent funding bid to include investigations in the USA, EU and Sub-Saharan Africa.