Do you know someone contributing towards sustainability and who deserves recognition? Nominations for the World Sustainability Award and the Emerging Sustainability Leader Award are now open! Find out a bit more about these sustainability awards and how to nominate someone below!

Why the World Sustainability Awards?

From the beginning of his compound preservation project, Dr. Shu-Kun Lin has always expressed interest in sustainability. Since then, his interest has widened considerably, leading to the creation of the Open Access journal Sustainability and the launch of the World Sustainability Forum (WSF). Through the two World Sustainability Awards, Dr. Lin and MDPI are able to encourage and support researchers who contribute to regional and global efforts towards a sustainable world. This a central and significant issue, now more than ever, given that the COVID-19 pandemic has challenged many of the world’s outdated economic, social, and environmental systems, prompting widespread calls for a global shift towards a more sustainable “new normal”.

What are the Sustainability Awards?

There are two different Sustainability Awards: The World Sustainability Award funded by the MDPI Sustainability Foundation, and the Emerging Sustainability Leader Award funded by the MDPI Journal Sustainability. Both awards are attributed to nominees who have made, and continue to make, a unique and outstanding academic or societal contribution to sustainability in general, or to a sustainability-relevant issue in particular. Nominees for the World Sustainability Award can be individual researchers or groups of researchers; whereas, nominees for the Emerging Sustainability Leader Award may be individual researchers aged 40 or under at the time of the submission deadline.

How does it work?

Nominations need to be sent to secretariat@wsforum.org by 31 July 2021. The nominees will then be evaluated by a Selection Committee consisting of a maximum of five members, including the two permanent members Dr. Shu-Kun Lin, founder and President of MDPI and founder and chairman of the MDPI Sustainability Foundation, and Prof. Dr. Ed Constable, former Vice President for Research of the University of Basel. Recipients will then be informed by the secretariat.

Awardees of both the World Sustainability Award and Emerging Sustainability Leader Award will receive a monetary prize of USD 100,000 and USD 20,000, respectively.

For the detailed instructions on how to submit, please visit our website.

Please note that self-nominations are not accepted.

When does the awards ceremony take place?

The awards ceremonies are always held during the World Sustainability Forum, and the recipient(s) of the awards are required to participate in the ceremony.

The first awards ceremony was held during the 6th World Sustainability Forum (WSF6) in Cape Town, South Africa, in January 2017. The recipients of the second awards were announced at the 7th World Sustainability Forum (WSF7) in Beijing, China, in September 2018. During the 8th World Sustainability Forum (WSF8) in 2020, the recipients of the third awards received their awards virtually. The recipients of the fourth awards will be announced at the 9th World Sustainability Forum (WSF9), held online from 13 to 15 September 2021.

Who are past winners of the sustainability awards?

The past recipients of the World Sustainability Award are Prof. Dr. Jeffrey D. Sachs and Dr. Sonia Ehrlich Sachs (2017), Dr. Mathis Wackernagel and Dr. Zhifu Mi (2018), and Prof. Dr. Michael E. Mann and Dr. Antonella Santuccione Chadha (2020).

The past recipients of the Emerging Sustainability Leader Award are Dr. Esther Ngumbi and Dr. Xiaosong Hu (2017), Dr. Bradley Hiller and Dr. Xiadong Zhang (2018), and Dr. Jing Meng and Dr. Natalia Mykhaylova (2020).

Click here to learn about the 2023 edition of the World Sustainability Forum.