São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, with its metropolitan area ranking fourth among the largest urban areas in the world. It has been an ICLEI Member since 1991.

Brazil Seminar on Sustainable Public Procurement

The event "Public Procurement: The Power of Government Purchasing in favour of Sustainability” took place on October 7 2008, in São Paulo. Its main objective was to raise awareness of the viability of sustainable purchasing, revealing the need to change current pattern of consumption, and presenting implementation tools.

Megacities promoting sustainable procurement

The project "Promoting Sustainable Public Procurement in Brazil", under which this event was organized, aims to promote sustainable procurement in three pilots governments - the city of São Paulo, and the states of São Paulo (SP) and Minas Gerais (MG). The population of these regions culminates to nearly 60 millions people and large amount of public purchasing, offering small changes the possibility of a large great impact.

Why should sustainable procurement by adopted?

This event began by asking the question “Why should sustainable procurement be adopted?” highlighting the problems of current consumption patterns. Participants then learned about successful examples and the information they need to apply them to their operations. Experts repeatedly emphasized the economic benefits of sustainable procurement. Local governments were reminded that their purchasing can shape the market demand, eventually increasing the supply of sustainable products, eventually benefiting customers.

Organizers

This event was organised by the Secretariat for the Environment of the State of São Paulo, together with the Center for Research on Sustainability, from the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (GVces), and ICLEI-Brazil. The seminar also had the support of the British Embassy in Brazil, and was sponsored by the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs of the British Government (DEFRA).

ICLEI and Sustainable Procurement

Find out more about ICLEI's activities in Procurement

More information

ICLEI - Latin American and Caribbean (Brazil Project Office), in Portuguese