Greening government procurement in developing countries: Building capacity in China

Published Date
September 2008, Vol.88(4):932–938, doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2007.04.016

Author 

• Yong Geng ^a,,
• Brent Doberstein ^b,

• aInstitute for Eco-planning and Development, School of Management Building, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, Liaoning Province 116024, PR China
• bDepartment of Geography, Faculty of Environmental Studies, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, Ont., Canada N2L 3G1

Received 28 October 2006. Revised 19 March 2007. Accepted 30 April 2007. Available online 15 June 2007. 

Abstract

With increasing environmental issues and depleting resources, the effective application of green government procurement (GGP) is urgently needed and potentially can have greater impacts in the developing world rather than in the developed world. Such an approach can help promote the general goal of sustainable development and address environmental issues through purchasing and facilitating the use of environmentally friendly services and products. This paper addresses this issue by employing a case study on China. We first trace the development of the GGP concept, its spread to Asian countries, and a number of approaches used to expand GGP adoption. We then review current practices in China on GGP, and analyze and identify some of the current barriers and problems in promoting green procurement in the Chinese governmental sector. We finally seek to identify possible appropriate capacity-building solutions, in order to facilitate the application of GGP in China.

Keywords

Green government procurement

Eco-efficiency

Sustainable development

China, capacity building

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