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June 22, 2026
Procurement Workshop Highlights Path to Low-Carbon, Resilient Buildings
How can public procurement rules and criteria be redesigned to deliver low-carbon and resilience?
This question was directly addressed during a dedicated procurement workshop at the GlobalABC Sustainable Buildings & Construction Summit, Lausanne on 20th April, 2026. The session moved beyond the theory to test how the Global Framework for Action: Harnessing sustainable and circular public procurement to drive demand for a near-zero and resilient built environment can be applied in practice.
Using a real project scenario, participants explored how procurement can shift from lowest upfront cost to whole-life value, carbon performance, and circularity. The discussion was driven around the importance of policies and leadership, the implementation mechanisms along the procurement life-cycle and the market response.
What are the challenges?
During the discussion, participants identified a set of systemic barriers that are holding back progress, including:
Fragmentation across ministries, policies, standards and processes.
Continued focus on lowest cost over lifecycle value and carbon performance
Limited use of performance-based approaches and lifecycle tools
Gaps in data availability and reliability
Weak coordination with the market.
What needs to change?
Some priority actions converged with the Global Framework for Action around the need to:
1. Strengthen policy alignment and leadership (P1.1)
Enable inter-ministerial collaboration to develop integrated building policies addressing operational and embodied carbon, circularity, and lifecycle assessment; supported by aligned standards, budgets, and incentives.
2. Redesign procurement practices (P3.2)
Adopt performance-based procurement that rewards innovation and outcomes, supported by the alignment of standards, strong data systems, and green financing are essential to scale sustainable construction.
3. Activate market collaboration (P2.6; P3.3).
Use early market engagement and collaborative procurement methods (e.g. competitive dialogues) to create clear demand signals and enable innovation across the value chain.
What enables implementation?
Scaling these actions requires aligned standards and metrics (e.g. embodied carbon, circularity), robust data systems for tracking performance, green financing and incentives to reduce risk, and capacity-building across procuring entities.
Key takeaway from this session
The workshop roundtables highlighted that policy ambition is advancing faster than implementation capability. However, by aligning leadership, operational tools, and market collaboration, public procurement can become a powerful demand-side driver for a near-zero, circular built environment. The Global Framework for Action provides a common direction, but impact depends on applying these actions in day-to-day procurement decisions.
Launched at this session: Online course to support implementation
To support the transition from ambition to practice, a new free online course on sustainable and circular public procurement for the built environment developed by UNEP was launched at the Summit.
More details at One Planet Network website.
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