Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SAPIENS (Sustainability And Procurement in International, European, and National Systems)
Berichtszeitraum: 2021-03-01 bis 2023-02-28
Public authorities in Europe are major buyers of goods and services, spending approximately € 1.8 trillion annually, representing around 14 % of the EU’s gross domestic product. PP Law, also shaped by EU and international law, provides for procedures to be followed by contracting authorities (CAs) to select their contracting partners from the private sector. By using their purchasing power to select socially responsible goods and services with lower impact on the environment (sustainable public procurement - SPP), CAs can make a significant contribution to sustainable consumption and production. By promoting and using SPP, CAs provide the private sector with real incentives for developing green technologies and products and for being socially responsible, ideally also beyond their government contracts. SPP allows governments to leverage public spending to increase demand for sustainable products and services, based on social and environmental criteria, increasing their market share and providing business with tangible incentives. PP is a highly relevant lever in the hands of governments to achieve the Social Development Goals (SDGs).
The United Nations have developed detailed guidance on sustainable procurement for the UN system so that procurement is harnessed to promote social justice and human rights, to ensure environmental sustainability and to build a future of equitable development and prosperity.
The objective of the Sustainability and Procurement in International, European, and National Systems (SAPIENS) is to foster interdisciplinary research into the evolving use of public procurement (PP) to address the social and environmental challenges of the 21st century with a view to create a significantly increased European knowledge base and research capacity on the law, the economics and the business sciences of SPP, thus helping Europe in addressing social and environmental challenges. By including SPP implementation into the analysis, SAPIENS aims at having an impact on the actual uptake of SPP in Europe and beyond and to significantly foster SPP as an already emerging sub-discipline of sustainability studies through its interdisciplinary approach and the inclusion of new SPP objectives, instruments, and techniques (and their effectiveness). SAPIENS will address a pressing need by training a cohort of SPP specialists capable of addressing the three dimensions of the SDGs (social, economic, environmental).
The network is an interdisciplinary collaboration, pooling world-leading researchers from relevant disciplines of law and economics and business studies. Moreover, SAPIENS is an intersectoral network of Beneficiaries and Partner Organisations (POs) including international organisations, Central Purchasing Bodies - CPBs and CAs, R&D centres, a lobbyist and a US academic institution. The network will not only train a specialised cohort of experts in SPP, but will also support and enhance the process of educating procurement professionals and convert research results into open access training materials, policy papers and procurement tools for a wider uptake, thus contributing to the achievement of the SGDs.
The United Nations have developed detailed guidance on sustainable procurement for the UN system so that procurement is harnessed to promote social justice and human rights, to ensure environmental sustainability and to build a future of equitable development and prosperity.
The objective of the Sustainability and Procurement in International, European, and National Systems (SAPIENS) is to foster interdisciplinary research into the evolving use of public procurement (PP) to address the social and environmental challenges of the 21st century with a view to create a significantly increased European knowledge base and research capacity on the law, the economics and the business sciences of SPP, thus helping Europe in addressing social and environmental challenges. By including SPP implementation into the analysis, SAPIENS aims at having an impact on the actual uptake of SPP in Europe and beyond and to significantly foster SPP as an already emerging sub-discipline of sustainability studies through its interdisciplinary approach and the inclusion of new SPP objectives, instruments, and techniques (and their effectiveness). SAPIENS will address a pressing need by training a cohort of SPP specialists capable of addressing the three dimensions of the SDGs (social, economic, environmental).
The network is an interdisciplinary collaboration, pooling world-leading researchers from relevant disciplines of law and economics and business studies. Moreover, SAPIENS is an intersectoral network of Beneficiaries and Partner Organisations (POs) including international organisations, Central Purchasing Bodies - CPBs and CAs, R&D centres, a lobbyist and a US academic institution. The network will not only train a specialised cohort of experts in SPP, but will also support and enhance the process of educating procurement professionals and convert research results into open access training materials, policy papers and procurement tools for a wider uptake, thus contributing to the achievement of the SGDs.
SAPIENS has been creating a unique working environment for cross sector and multidisciplinary research, providing the ESRs with the scientific, technical and transferable skills necessary to improve their career perspective and employability through local and network-wide training, and secondments providing them with first-hand experience on Sustainable Public Procurement (SPP) applied research. 15 early-stage researchers were successfully appointed within the first 12 months of the Action. The inaugural meeting in Turin in September 2021 with the recruited ESRs and Lead Researchers started an intense training phase with ATC1 on Procurement and Sustainability & Soft Skills for ESRs followed by ATC2 on Sustainable Public Procurement and the Circular Economy in Hasselt in December 2021, ATC3 on Actors in Developing SPP Rules and Best Practices in Rome in April 2022, ATC4 on Sustainability Assessment, Tools and Procedures in Gavle in June 2022, the Summer School in Cluj Napoca in July 2022 and ATC5 on Sustainability in the Supply Chain in Lodz in October 2022. Moreover, project meetings and supervisory board meetings were held in Rome and Lodz and will be held in Budapest, Copenhagen, London and Birmingham. This was complemented by the internal training activities of the beneficiaries. An additional ATC6 on Policy advice, outreach & dissemination planned in Copenhagen in September 2022 and the Final Network Conference in June 2024 in Birmingham will complete the training programme. In 2022, the ESRs started their secondment programmes and have completed 17 secondments so far. The ESRs and their supervisors have comprehensively participated and presented their research and the SAPIENS Network in more than 50 external events, reaching a varied audience across many countries already. Collaborations with several associations, European or international organisations and research centres have been established or strengthened. To date, the fellows have published eight open access papers.
SAPIENS’ direct impact will be to create a unique European and international knowledge base and research capacity on SPP, thus contributing significantly to efforts towards achieving the SDGs by (a) advancing the state of the art in research on SPP, (b) by creating connecting bridges between industry, academic, NGOs and other stakeholders working on SPP, and (c) by setting the ground for future collaborative patterns in the very interdisciplinary field of SPP. It will achieve this aim by training a cohort of 15 ESRs with the specialised skills required to work, by pursuing a rigorous and multi-layered public engagement strategy. SAPIENS is also addressing a scientific gap, by integrating SPP within the field of sustainability studies. As the 2017 Global Review of SPP recognises, in order to transform production and consumption patterns, it will be necessary to foster collaboration among stakeholders throughout the entire value chain. The creation of multi-stakeholder collaboration and knowledge-sharing platforms at local, national and international level will be essential to achieving this goal.
SAPIENS will have four key areas of impact: 1) on the ESRs, their skills, and future career prospects; 2) on the development of a strongly linked interdisciplinary academic community with specialised knowledge of SPP; 3) on the European research and policy agendas on SPP and the implementation of SDGs and their targets; and 4) more broadly, on awareness of both stakeholders, including Contracting Authorities, and the public of the potential of SPP to contribute in addressing the most pressing issues our society is facing and in achieving the SDGs. SAPIENS has already facilitated new collaborations and aims at building partnerships beyond the network’s lifetime further strengthening academic and applied research involving the Partner Organisations with the effect to facilitate further developments in the uptake of SPP. This will also lead to further sector-specific and intersectoral training of future cohorts capable of efficient interdisciplinary work.
SAPIENS will have four key areas of impact: 1) on the ESRs, their skills, and future career prospects; 2) on the development of a strongly linked interdisciplinary academic community with specialised knowledge of SPP; 3) on the European research and policy agendas on SPP and the implementation of SDGs and their targets; and 4) more broadly, on awareness of both stakeholders, including Contracting Authorities, and the public of the potential of SPP to contribute in addressing the most pressing issues our society is facing and in achieving the SDGs. SAPIENS has already facilitated new collaborations and aims at building partnerships beyond the network’s lifetime further strengthening academic and applied research involving the Partner Organisations with the effect to facilitate further developments in the uptake of SPP. This will also lead to further sector-specific and intersectoral training of future cohorts capable of efficient interdisciplinary work.