Přehled o publikaci

The Slovak Republic spends approximately 12.5% of its GDP on public procurement. One of the main challenges of the public procurement system is transforming it from a mere instrument for securing purchases into a strategic component of public policies that aims to help society address today's grand challenges, such as global warming, energy crises, and post-COVID recovery. Local governments play a crucial role in implementing green public procurement, especially in highly decentralized contexts like the Slovak Republic, which has around 2,890 municipalities. So far, we know very little about how green public procurement is applied at the local level. Our study is a collaborative effort involving researchers from the Sustainable Procurement Research Initiative at the Kogod School of Business and the School of Public Affairs at American University, Charles University, Ambis University, the Technical University of Ostrava, and Matej Bel University. The study aims to: • Identify facilitators and barriers to adopting and implementing green purchasing policies in Slovak municipalities. • Recommend actions for more effectively advancing green purchasing practices. We surveyed 121 politicians and directors from the finance, acquisitions, general administration, municipal public services, and solid waste/environmental management departments across 2,891 municipalities and city districts. Due to the low response rate, some of the results are statistically insignificant. Nevertheless, we believe that our study can serve as an initial mapping of the real situation with green procurement at the local government level in Slovakia. Our findings indicate that 31% of respondents report their city has a green purchasing policy. We found only a few statistically significant differences between organizations with green purchasing policies and those without.