An assessment of green procurement practices in South African metropolitan municipalities

Abstract

Environmental degradation is a global challenge that affects all. One of the most prominent impacts of environmental degradation is the climate change phenomenon. The adverse impacts of climate change have given rise to responses aimed at retarding, halting and learning to live with the already present effects of climate change. These responses to climate change fall into two broad categories: mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation addresses the climate change challenge through seeking a reduction or elimination of anthropogenic generated greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. Adaptation on the other hand addresses climate change through reducing the adverse impacts of climate change as well as exploiting economic and social opportunities presented by climate change. Green procurement has been identified as one of the climate change intervention measures. This is because research shows that procurement policies and practices of both the public and private sectors have the potential to influence environmentally friendly modes of production and the provision of ‘greener’ goods and services that include infrastructure. In many developing countries the big spending power of the public sector, particularly municipalities, makes them influential players in the nature of goods and services production and provision. Against this background, this study investigates the role of South African metropolitan municipalities in addressing environmental decay through green procurement. Specifically, the study aims to assess the levels of green procurement practices of goods and services within South Africa metropolitan municipalities. This is achieved through; (i) determining the level of understanding of sustainable development, and (ii) determining the extent to which green procurement is practiced in South African metropolitan municipalities, and identifying policy and legislative requirements (if any) that support green procurement practices. Given the complexity of means, policy and practices around the green procurement drive; the study employed a mixed method approach. The mixed method approach employed three methods namely: document analysis, interviews and the use of a questionnaire. Analysis of data included content analysis, inductive thematic analysis and basic numerical analysis of the questionnaire, using MS Excel. The study made two broad findings; (i) there is generally a good understanding of the sustainable development discourse among South Africa’s metropolitan officials; and (ii) policy response to green procurement shows that the older metropolitans that include the City of Cape Town, City of Johannesburg, City of Tshwane, Ekurhuleni, eThekwini and Nelson Mandela Bay have made greater progress making explicit reference to green procurement in different policies compared to the younger metropolitans such as Buffalo City and Mangaung. Despite the general understanding of the sustainable development discourse and evidence of explicit reference to green procurement in some metropolitan policy documents there is a general lack of comprehensive implementation of green procurement practices across all the metropolitan municipalities. The current implementation is sporadic and largely through a number of projects that are not always linked to give rise to effective synergies. The study concludes that there is limited implementation of green procurement policies and strategies in all metropolitans. This may be attributed to limited policy understanding and lack of education and training around green economy transition and green procurement issues. The study recommends the mainstreaming of the green procurement concept into already existing policies and to establish new policies where there are none. There is a need to translate the policies into legislation and regulations that carry incentive to reward and encourage the desired green procurement practices. There is further need to put in place sanctions to discourage and halt undesired procurement practices.