TBILISI: The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is keen to work with Azerbaijan in construction area of sustainable procurement, ADB’s Deputy Director General and Chief Procurement Officer of Procurement, Portfolio and Financial Management Department Jeff Taylor said in an interview with Trend on the sidelines of the Bank’s annual meeting in Tbilisi.

‘Sustainable procurement is an extremely broad subject. It can incorporate governance, economic considerations, social, and of course, very importantly, environmental. ADB will be looking for the opportunities to work and support these programs where it’s aligned with our project financing and our activities. That could be around more sustainable buildings, construction materials, and so forth,’ he said.

Taylor noted that every country is taking a different approach with different priorities depending on their geography and economic circumstance.

‘But I think Azerbaijan has taken the most important step, which is to incorporate sustainability considerations within n
ational regulation and law. And that provides a very good foundation going forward in terms of the way we can support environmental considerations, social considerations, and so forth, within both the ADB finance portfolio and in support of the government’s own reforms,’ said ADB’s deputy director general.

He went on to add that green cement is low carbon, lower carbon than traditional cement.

‘We have been piloting this in India in an ADB finance project. It is dependent on the market being able to respond to that requirement. We did a deep dive into the Indian market and concluded that manufacturers were able to respond. One of the areas and ways we can support that is to provide an advantage in an evaluation process for a contractor that offers greener or more environmentally friendly materials.

We’re using the example of green cement, and I believe shortly there may be some global standards established for green cement. If that cement is used, the carbon offset or carbon saving could potentially be cou
nted into the nationally

determined contributions (NDCs),’ Taylor explained.

He went on to add that there are many opportunities in procurement to reduce the carbon footprint, both in the way the material is used in construction and also the performance of the asset.

‘Another example would be energy efficient pumps, for example, or LED street lighting, and examples like that, I believe could be considered towards nationally determined contributions. We will have to be responsive to Azerbaijan’s own program. It has to be aligned to Azerbaijan’s, rather than imposed by ADB, with ADB saying you must do this or must do that. That doesn’t work because sustainability is such a broad subject, and there needs to be national ownership. But the areas that I’m particularly interested in, is construction. How do we lessen the impact and the carbon produced through the construction process? So that will be one area. Another area that I’m particularly interested in working with all of our clients on is introducing it in
to regulation standards and so forth,’ he said.

ADB’s deputy director general noted that Azerbaijan has already taken the most important step of providing a regulatory framework that ADB can support.

‘But construction materials is, from the procurement process side, the area of greatest interest. If we look at the heavy industries around construction, asphalt, cement, steel, aluminum, it makes up 30-40% of global emissions. Any, even if it’s a small reduction in those heavy industries, has a very significant impact.

We’ve done diagnostics for all 41 of our borrowing countries. We’ve looked across the regulatory framework and found, for example, in Azerbaijan, its procurement reforms. We are in the process of agreeing with each of our client countries that we have actually presented an accurate picture. So far, of the 41 countries, 10 have said yes, we have. We can’t be discussing this with Azerbaijan because we want to make sure that our diagnostic is accurately reflecting the current state of play in Azer
baijan because we are in Manila. We need to make sure that the diagnostic has reached the right conclusion. So we’re in the process of agreeing those. Sometime later this year, we hope to be able to share all of them that are agreed publicly. And that will provide us a list of priorities for each of our client countries to work within. It’s very important that we are aligned with the national priorities on sustainable procurement to make sure we’re as effective as possible,’ he explained.

Taylor pointed out that ADB is not going to mandate many elements of this because that won’t work.

‘It shouldn’t be an externally imposed. But if we find that we’re aligned, it could be, as I mentioned, green cement, but it could be social inclusion as well. It could be evaluation and contractual mechanisms to encourage the participation of women in the supply chain. So it really will be determined by Azerbaijan’s priorities. But we’re very much open to anything within the sustainability space and supporting that. It’s not
a single process that you must comply with. One of the things we’re doing is developing knowledge products as well, and how you can evaluate sustainability in procurement and provide examples and case studies to all of our clients so if their priority is steel, they can go and look at the research we have done there. If it’s asphalt, bituminous chemicals, they can look at that. If it’s cement, they can look at that. So it’s really to provide a set of tools potentially for use in procurement, whether it’s able to be financed or not, that they can apply in procurement,’ he concluded.

Source: Trend News Agency