Integrating Sustainability into Humanitarian Procurement

Humanitarian supply chains are characterized by uncertainty and unpredictability of demand and volatility of the context. Despite such specificities, integrating sustainability into humanitarian procurement seems imperative due to the dire need stated by research and past antecedents of unsustainable procurement. This study identifies the barriers and enablers on the way of integrating sustainability into humanitarian procurement. The ideas of three humanitarian experts were elicited for identification of the barriers and enablers. Next, a group analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was applied to aggregate the ideas of experts and prioritize the barriers based on their potential for improvement. The results show that “local procurement” is the most important category of barriers, followed by “funding environment”, and “inter-and intra-organizational barriers”. Finally, the barriers and enablers within each category are discussed in detail and possible ways to address them are suggested.