(MENAFN- Trend News Agency) TBILISI, Georgia, May 6. The Asian DevelopmentBank (ADB) is keen to work with Azerbaijan in construction area ofsustainable procurement, ADB's Deputy Director General and ChiefProcurement Officer of Procurement, Portfolio and FinancialManagement Department Jeff Taylor said in an interview withTrend on thesidelines of the Bank's annual meeting in Tbilisi.
“Sustainable procurement is an extremely broad subject. It canincorporate governance, economic considerations, social, and ofcourse, very importantly, environmental. ADB will be looking forthe opportunities to work and support these programs where it'saligned with our project financing and our activities. That couldbe around more sustainable buildings, construction materials, andso forth,” he said.
Taylor noted that every country is taking a different approachwith different priorities depending on their geography and economiccircumstance.
“But I think Azerbaijan has taken the most important step, whichis to incorporate sustainability considerations within nationalregulation and law. And that provides a very good foundation goingforward in terms of the way we can support environmentalconsiderations, social considerations, and so forth, within boththe ADB finance portfolio and in support of the government's ownreforms,” said ADB's deputy director general.
He went on to add that green cement is low carbon, lower carbonthan traditional cement.
“We have been piloting this in India in an ADB finance project is dependent on the market being able to respond to thatrequirement. We did a deep dive into the Indian market andconcluded that manufacturers were able to respond. One of the areasand ways we can support that is to provide an advantage in anevaluation process for a contractor that offers greener or moreenvironmentally friendly materials.
We're using the example of green cement, and I believe shortlythere may be some global standards established for green cement. Ifthat cement is used, the carbon offset or carbon saving couldpotentially be counted into the nationally
determined contributions (NDCs),” Taylor explained.
He went on to add that there are many opportunities inprocurement to reduce the carbon footprint, both in the way thematerial is used in construction and also the performance of theasset.
“Another example would be energy efficient pumps, for example,or LED street lighting, and examples like that, I believe could beconsidered towards nationally determined contributions. We willhave to be responsive to Azerbaijan's own program. It has to bealigned to Azerbaijan's, rather than imposed by ADB, with ADBsaying you must do this or must do that. That doesn't work becausesustainability is such a broad subject, and there needs to benational ownership. But the areas that I'm particularly interestedin, is construction. How do we lessen the impact and the carbonproduced through the construction process? So that will be onearea. Another area that I'm particularly interested in working withall of our clients on is introducing it into regulation standardsand so forth,” he said.
ADB's deputy director general noted that Azerbaijan has alreadytaken the most important step of providing a regulatory frameworkthat ADB can support.
“But construction materials is, from the procurement processside, the area of greatest interest. If we look at the heavyindustries around construction, asphalt, cement, steel, aluminum,it makes up 30-40% of global emissions. Any, even if it's a smallreduction in those heavy industries, has a very significantimpact.
We've done diagnostics for all 41 of our borrowing countries. We'velooked across the regulatory framework and found, for example, inAzerbaijan, its procurement reforms. We are in the process ofagreeing with each of our client countries that we have actuallypresented an accurate picture. So far, of the 41 countries, 10 havesaid yes, we have. We can't be discussing this with Azerbaijanbecause we want to make sure that our diagnostic is accuratelyreflecting the current state of play in Azerbaijan because we arein Manila. We need to make sure that the diagnostic has reached theright conclusion. So we're in the process of agreeing those later this year, we hope to be able to share all of themthat are agreed publicly. And that will provide us a list ofpriorities for each of our client countries to work within. It'svery important that we are aligned with the national priorities onsustainable procurement to make sure we're as effective aspossible,” he explained.
Taylor pointed out that ADB is not going to mandate manyelements of this because that won't work.
“It shouldn't be an externally imposed. But if we find thatwe're aligned, it could be, as I mentioned, green cement, but itcould be social inclusion as well. It could be evaluation andcontractual mechanisms to encourage the participation of women inthe supply chain. So it really will be determined by Azerbaijan'spriorities. But we're very much open to anything within thesustainability space and supporting that. It's not a single processthat you must comply with. One of the things we're doing isdeveloping knowledge products as well, and how you can evaluatesustainability in procurement and provide examples and case studiesto all of our clients so if their priority is steel, they can goand look at the research we have done there. If it's asphalt,bituminous chemicals, they can look at that. If it's cement, theycan look at that. So it's really to provide a set of toolspotentially for use in procurement, whether it's able to befinanced or not, that they can apply in procurement,” heconcluded.
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