Meet Our Partners: Institute of Albanian Municipalities
The Institute of Albanian Municipalities (IAM), Circular Minds’ discovery partner, plays a vital role in supporting local governance and sustainable development across Albania. To introduce our discovery partner and illustrate the use of our situational analysis, this article will present the results of IAM’s analysis. IAM's role as a discovery partner is to introduce new ideas, concepts, and practices from EU countries to Albanian stakeholders.
IAM's application of the situational analysis indicators, focused firstly on increasing the internal know-how of IAM staff about the circular economy and analysing the situation in Albania within a general context. This was followed up with engaging in peer-to-peer meetings with Circular Minds, as well as bilateral meetings and online meetings with other partners, to gain new knowledge. IAM then shared this information with 61 municipalities through the publication “Circular Procurement in 8 Steps”.
Key results reached by IAM highlighted the persistent challenge related to improper waste management, despite Albania’s progress in decoupling economic growth from resource use. Continued economic growth and rising consumption threaten to worsen these issues, escalating production-related emissions and impacting the country’s resilience and competitiveness. Institutions recognise the importance of a circular transition, but low societal awareness, inadequate infrastructure, and limited financing options remain significant barriers. These findings are highly relevant to Albania, where the public procurement sector holds a substantial portion of the GDP.
The relevance of these findings lies in the need for a whole-government approach and collaboration among diverse stakeholders to address the cross-cutting nature of the circular transition. Key policy priorities for IAM under the Circular Minds project include capacity-building policies for municipal staff, the introduction of guidelines that incorporate lifecycle assessments and sustainable criteria into municipal contracts, institutional education and awareness for municipalities, and promoting incentives for reducing, reusing, and recycling waste materials.
Next steps include gathering feedback from groups and engaging in sustainable public procurement in Albania. This will involve guidance from the Public Procurement Agency, strengthening administrative capacity through awareness raising and training, updating strategic documents to reflect green procurement costs, inviting goods/services providers to brief them on the tender process, encouraging bidders to provide ideas on green procurement, and introducing green procurement aspects in tender specifications.