Event

Driving change: empowering sustainability through green governance

As the European Green Capital 2023, the City of Tallinn has made Green Governance a top priority. The upcoming conference aims to unite cities from the Baltic Sea Region and beyond, fostering the exchange of best practices and discussions on the challenges of transitioning to green governance.

16 November 2023 at 09:00 EEST

ending at 20:00 EEST

Estonia

Kultuurikatel, Kursi 3, Tallinn, 10415

Event contact

Johanna Lehtmets / johanna.lehtmets@sei.org

Young woman sitting and looking at Tallinn in the morning. — Local governments can achieve sustainability through their procurement processes by ensuring they are not only climate-neutral but also circular and free from harmful toxins.

Oleh Slobodeniuk / Getty Images

With Green Public Procurement as a central theme, the conference recognizes its vital role in implementing green governance and promoting sustainable consumption and production. Local governments possess significant potential to achieve sustainability goals through their procurement processes, particularly by ensuring they are not just climate-neutral but also circular and free from harmful toxins. During the event, the first-ever NonHazCity Award for tox-free, circular and climate-neutral buildings and building processes at municipalities will be launched.

The event aims to bring together local authorities, business actors and all the other individuals who are interested in green governance topics. It will provide a valuable networking opportunity for Green Cities, facilitating collaboration and mutual learning.

This event is organised by the City of Tallinn, Stockholm Environment Institute Tallinn Centre and Baltic Environmental Forum Estonia and it´s part of the Tallinn Greentech Week programme.

Programme

Moderator of the event: Heidrun Fammler, Baltic Environmental Forum

9:00 Opening of the event by Mayor of Tallinn, Mihhail Kõlvart

Keynote: Green Public Procurement – a great policy instrument for achieving Green Governance. How “green” can procurement be? What are the key barriers and biggest potentials? Evelin Piirsalu, Stockholm Environment Institute Tallinn Centre

Presentations by representatives of municipalities from the Baltic Sea region

Best practice examples and ambitions for greening procurement as an effective instrument of Green Governance:

Stockholm: The ChemClimCircle approach for an integrated procurement – more than CO2 emission reduction. Arne Jamtrot, Head of the Chemicals Centre
Helsinki: An ambitious Green Deal for a tox-free environment: procuring (and building) a Nordic-Swan-labelled Kindergarten from A to Z. Katri Kuusinen, Head of Unit, Urban Environment
Västerås: The plastic reduction action plan: high-level political commitment for soft measures to reduce single-use plastic and plastic packaging in the municipality. Vicky Skure Eriksson, Deputy Mayor
Tallinn: Experiences from greening the public events – have the ambitions of procuring single-use plastic-free events come true? Joosep Vimm, Deputy Mayor
Riga: Topic TBC. Viesturs Zeps, Chairman of the Housing and Environment Committee, Riga City Council
Smiltene: The Green Public Procurement vision and first experiences from its implementation. Mārtiņš Ulāns, Deputy Executive Director of Smiltene Municipality, Latvia
Hamburg: The “early bird” – comprehensive guidelines on environmental criteria for procurers since 2016: a long way to go until sustainability criteria. Jens Kerstan, Senator for the Environment, Climate, Energy and Agro-Economy
Lithuania: Topic TBC. Kęstutis Kazulis, Senior Adviser at the Public Procurement Office

Panel discussion among the speakers:

How can GPP become a routine, not only a best practice example – how to make it a new norm?

13:00–13:15 Launch of the NonHazCity Award for tox-free, circular and climate-neutral buildings and building processes at municipalities.

Mihhail Kõlvart, Mayor of Tallinn and Alexandra Wandel, Chair of World Future Council

13:15–14:30 Lunch

14:30–17:30 The NonHazCity & ChemClimCircle projects‘ public seminar on specific aspects of Green Public Procurement (GPP)

Session 1: Evaluation of GPP implementation impacts

How and what exactly to monitor for “green” purchases at the procurement unit and/or municipality, regional entity level?
Experiences with CO₂ emission reduction calculation of GPP implementation. With: Jens Johansson, IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute.

Session 2: Certification and labelling as instruments for procurement decisions (thematic focus: construction materials & buildings)

What exactly do different existing building certificates certify? Can they be an instrument to judge the integrated chemicals, climate and circularity aspects of a building?
Eco-labels as the preferred instrument for procurers: what do they really label with regard to construction materials and buildings? Do they sufficiently cover circularity and hazardous substance issues or mostly climate-relevant issues?
Eco-labels for cleaning agents and detergents: long time known, many products on the market at reasonable price – no problem for the procurers? All purchased goods are the “Green choice”? With: Andrzej Tonderski, POMInno LtD & NonHazCity team and Andreas Ahrens, Oekopol LtD.

Summary and conclusions: Martyn Futter, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

17:30 Social networking