SEAD Shares Best Practices for Monitoring & Evaluating Green Procurement Programs

Over the last several years, an increasing number of governments have launched green public procurement (GPP) and energy efficient procurement (EPP) programs to demonstrate leadership in adopting eco-friendly purchasing practices, reduce the environmental impacts of products, mitigate climate change, improve resource efficiency, reduce energy use, and encourage environmentally sustainable economic growth. Developing effective monitoring and evaluation (M&E) mechanisms is critical to ensuring that these programs are effective.

While there are many resources available on implementing GPP programs, few of them help policymakers develop M&E systems. The SEAD Guide for Monitoring and Evaluating Green Public Procurement Programs seeks to address this gap and provide policymakers and procurement officials with:

• An overview of the benefits of monitoring and evaluating EEP/GPP programs;
• A presentation of different types of M&E systems that can be implemented to achieve different policy objectives; and
• Key lessons learned, which draw on over 20 case studies and international examples.

The Guide outlines the following key steps in developing an approach for green public procurement:

Additionally, the Guide offers the following lessons for policymakers:

• Embed M&E requirements during policy design; early planning of M&E systems can help to better define EEP/GPP policy objectives, reduce costs, and minimize technical or operational difficulties during deployment;
• Create M&E systems that utilize existing processes, tracking systems, and available data;
• Communicate results with indicators that are easy to understand; and
• Increase compliance through economic and/or reputational incentives, and by integrating EEP/GPP into existing management systems.

The SEAD Guide for Monitoring and Evaluating Green Public Procurement Programs was written by EcoInstitut Barcelona, with support from CLASP.