Procurement with Purpose newsletter no. 89, October 22nd, 2024 with 'public good', conferences, bio-diversity and the SPP
Greetings from Lille and the Skema Business School where I am running an elective on “Bad Buying” as part of the Procurement and Supply Chain Masters course. 10 hours of teaching over 2 days which is absolutely exhausting. I don’t know how full-time teachers / lecturers do it really. So this really is an abbreviated newsletter today.
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Public good procurement
A new report from London-based Aspire Community Works is titled “Public good procurement - building better communities through conscious purchasing – a guide from the past to the future”.
Aspire, a community business that is dedicated to promoting fair working conditions and tackling inequality in the labour market also bids itself within the public procurement process, and has included its own experience to produce this report. There is little doubt for instance that public procurement that simply drives down cost by reducing wages and exploiting staff just passes the cost on to other parts of the public sector through higher benefits and healthcare costs, for a start.
“The race to the bottom - Aspire’s experience is that all too often cost remains the dominant factor in procurement decision-making, creating negative public value, dragging down local communities and impeding economic growth. Things need to change”.
The report also calls on the UK Government and the devolved nations to “launch reviews of access to justice within the public procurement system to tackle inequities faced by smaller organisations in the not for profit and private sectors as part of its #BetterforUs campaign”.
I’ll have more on the report next week but you can get ahead of me and read it here .?
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A good year for conferences
The excellent Imagine newsletter points out that this year we will see several critical global conference addressing key environmental issues.
“By the end of 2024, nearly 200 nations will have met at three conferences to address three problems: biodiversity loss, climate change and plastic pollution. Colombia will host talks next week to assess global progress in protecting 30% of all land and water by 2030. Hot on its heels is COP29 in Azerbaijan. Here, countries will revisit the pledge they made last year in Dubai to?"transition away" ?from the fossil fuels driving climate breakdown. And in December, South Korea could see the first global agreement to tackle plastic waste”.
Do these events actually help us to make progress? I’m not sure but I suppose it is preferable to countries NOT getting together to talk about these issues.
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领英推荐
But wildlife still on the decline
But the biodiversity talks this week take place against a background of failure . “More than 85% of countries are set to miss the UN’s deadline to submit new nature pledges ahead of the COP16 biodiversity summit in Colombia, according to a joint investigation by Carbon Brief and the Guardian”.
“Only five of the 17 “megadiverse countries ” – which together provide a home to?70% ?of the world’s biodiversity – have produced new pledges for tackling nature loss, according to the Carbon Brief and Guardian analysis”.
On a similar note, last week the 2024?Living Planet Index report ?was published and makes for some grim reading. “Ourworldindata.org ” website explains the findings here . “The headline is a 73% average decline in wildlife populations since 1970”.? But the excellent article digs into the stats to show we have to be careful with our interpretation. “What this metric tells us is that across the 34,836 studied wildlife populations, the?average?decline was 73%... this doesn’t mean 73% of populations are in decline; in fact, around half of the studied populations were in decline, while half were either increasing or stable”.
But at a purely personal level, it feels like we are on a disturbing track. I notice that we have fewer birds, insects and butterflies in our garden than a decade ago. There used to be bats in the big trees next door – trees that were cut down a few years back (which we celebrated, to be fair, as it increased our “utility”). But the bats have gone. ?I hardly saw a wasp, moth or butterfly this summer. I worry that my grandson will live in a world where humans are pretty much the only species he will ever see outside of a zoo.
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Sustainable Procurement Pledge update
I could only tune in to the second hour of the SPP global ambassadors meeting last week. There was some good stuff though and I look forward to catching up with the first half of the session on playback shortly. ?There was some very worthwhile content, and co-founder Bertrand Conqueret was excellent and motivating as usual. I hope to catch up with the first hour on playback soon.
But the SPP leadership will need to be careful how they engage with the big consultancies and similar who want to work with the organisation. The session led by Gartner was fine but the final session with the Economist Group seemed to be a waste of time to be frank. Maybe more will come out of that relationship in time but the SPP needs to ensure it (and its members) are really getting something out of these collaborations, not just giving providers cheap access to lots of procurement executives. ?
That has been a weakness for CIPS too in recent years – I downloaded a sponsored paper promoted by CIPS the other day that was low quality and really had no value. Quality control and making sure objectives are aligned with those firms who want to work with “us” is key for CIPS, SPP and all others who want to represent the profession. ?
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Bon Iver is back and brilliant
In the spirit of keeping it brief – Bon Iver is arguably the most talented “popular music” artist since Bowie or Prince in my opinion (sorry, Swifties). Over five very varied albums (OK, four plus a lengthy “EP”) he has demonstrated considerable creativity across various genres along with old fashioned songwriter’s craft. His new three-track release continues in that vein and SPEYSIDE is one of those songs that once you’ve heard it twice, you will feel you’ve known it all your life.
More responsible, net-zero supply chains through improving collaborations, best practice sharing and tech & tools
3 周Just catching up on this Peter. Thanks for your comments on the SPP and the Economist partnership. I can assure you and everyone else that all SPP insight/tools/meetings etc will intend to always be made available for free for all. We just want to get profession of procurement to be recognised more by the broader channels for the expertise and potential it has to save the world. A fair challenge and one that can help us reaffirm why we exist. Hope that helps.
Has anyone picked up on why https://www.cips.org/about-us/news/cips-and-uk-government-commercial-function-extend-partnership bounces to a different URL, mid-way though the latest (3 year) extension, agreed Nov 2022 ? The extension has another year to run...so why take down notification of its existence ??? It was billed as a flagship agreement, was it not ?? We're having to take the case to PHSO and Tribunal for an explanation...why ??
Head of Procurement & Strategic Sourcing with Extensive ITT Experience
1 个月It is an irrefutable fact that the human world is primarily based upon consumption. We produce to consume and by extension our profession supports the acquisition of “stuff” to enable the very same production and subsequent consumption. We even buy services to deal with waste from an inability to manage demand. We are, despite how often we pat ourselves on the back, hugely wasteful and this is evident from the inequality created from our practices. We must accelerate a circular way of life (beyond economy) otherwise we will cease to be. Procure to prosper, thrift to thrive. We have a global role to play and it starts with fundamentally hard decisions at a geo political level. I applaud anyone who devotes their career that prioritises society over individual, equity before ambition, faith without prejudice and sustainability before profit.