Procurement is a daily part of GIZ’s work and recently it has become central to GIZ’s sustainability agenda. This has kickstarted the roll out of a series of Pilot Sustainable Procurement training courses, the first of which was organized in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in September 2019. The 2nd took place in Bangkok from 30th October to 1st November 2019, and the 3rd will be conducted in Bogota, Columbia this year. In Bangkok, the training was organized by the Sustainable Procurement team from GIZ Headquarters in close cooperation with the GIZ Thailand CSH team at the Royal Orchid Sheraton Hotel.
Mr. Immanuel Gebhardt and Mr. Michael Schuster from the Procurement and Contracting Division guided 20 participants from GIZ Country Offices in selected Asian countries, including Heads of Admin and Finance and key Procurement Officers. The training consisted of 2 days, followed by a Tour de Hotel. These 2.5 days allowed participants to deepen their conceptual understanding of sustainability and its importance for GIZ, showed how sustainability can be applied to different areas of the procurement process, as well as allowed for exchange of country experiences on ongoing successful sustainable practices.
The workshops offered a special opportunity to bring the heads of procurement from different countries together and discuss GIZ’s need to ‘walk the talk’ by embedding sustainability within our work. Discussions and knowledge sharing revolved around understanding the origins of sustainability and its three dimensions – ecological, social and economic, how this link with the 17 SDG Goals and GIZ’s mandate, and its relevance for GIZ regarding economic efficiency, stakeholder expectations and acquisition. Participants from India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand shared sustainable practices from their countries, which demonstrated that some practices, such as a sustainable checklist for hotels, are already successfully integrated at selected country offices. In-office habits, such as double-side printing, reduction of single-use plastic and energy consumption are well established in most countries. Aside from sharing tips and practices, ongoing challenges were also discussed along with ideas for how best to overcome them.
Since most things sound abstract in theory, the training included a tour through the hotel, allowing participants to see hands-on actual sustainable practices by a hotel. Among these practices were the wastewater treatment process of the hotel, presented by Mr. Suwich Chulajurm, the Director of Engineering, as well as different programs dealing with food waste and plastic reduction and measures for efficient energy use demonstrated by Mr. Mathieu Bellec the Food & Beverage Director of the hotel. Touring the hotel and seeing the various measures in place as well as the limitations, gave participants an insight into what to look out for when taking hotels under contract.
The 2.5 days inspired participants to adopt more sustainable practices in their own countries – beginning with smaller daily office practices to criteria awarding in the procurement processes. The sustainable procurement team at headquarters will continue in pushing the importance of this topic and provide support to the country offices in integrating sustainability across different areas of procurement. One of the main measures to be taken in the future is the digitalization of procurement processes, which is planned to be implemented in the coming 2-3 years.