Newsletter «Zurich (Inter)national»

Public procurement is within the direct sphere of influence of the public sector. At the online conference «Sustainable Public Procurement», organized by the Federal Procurement Conference BKB, Sonja Gehrig from the Department of Health and Environment presented practical examples of sustainable procurement from the City of Zurich. The aim of the conference was to provide insights into the areas of construction, textiles, food and sanitary paper. The use cases may encourage other municipalities to take action themselves in the sphere public procurement and to include ecological as well as social criteria in tenders. The City of Zurich sees sustainable and climate-prioritized procurement as an opportunity to keep greenhouse gas emissions as low as possible in its own purchasing and to reduce them even further in the future.

Based on a reception of the Mayor of Sarajevo by the Mayor of Zurich followed by a Memorandum of Understanding, the City of Zurich entered a project cooperation with Sarajevo in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The «Urban Transformation Project Sarajevo» (UTPS), funded by the State Secretary of Economic Affairs (SECO), will contribute to modernizing the system of integral urban planning in the Canton and City of Sarajevo and to creating better conditions for a sustainable development. A virtual kick-off meeting on 7th June 2021 marked the beginning of the inception phase aiming at defining measures how the Swiss partners can support the system of urban planning in Sarajevo. The project is an international multi-stakeholder initiative, including the following main partners: City of Zurich, SECO, ETH Zurich, Canton and City of Sarajevo, Urban Planning Institute Sarajevo, University of Sarajevo and the diaspora organization Matica BiH. We will keep you posted about further developments.