Sustainable Procurement from Developing Countries: Practices and Challenges for Business and Support Agencies

How can we unleash the potential of sustainable development and integrate it into trade? This book explores how procurement by Western companies can be carried out in such a way that all parties benefit, including the poor.

If responsibly applied, sustainable procurement has the potential to help reduce poverty while offering added value to suppliers in developing countries and buyers in Europe. In many sectors, sustainability is still in its infancy, and only minor progress has been made in making purchasing practices sustainable. There are several international initiatives to promote sustainable procurement but few practical business experiences. Most companies, small and medium enterprises in particular, simply don’t know how to bring it about.

This book is intended for readers in businesses and support organizations interested in promoting sustainable procurement in developing countries. It documents three examples of companies that procure their supplies (ginger, mango and citrus) from countries in the South—Sierra Leone, Mali and South Africa. Drawing on lessons from these cases, the book discusses the challenges to making sustainable procurement more mainstream and suggests ways in which buyers, suppliers, the public sector and support agencies can encourage it.