MDPI recently hosted the 11th World Sustainability Forum (WSF) in beautiful Barcelona!

The World Sustainability Forum is an event organized and hosted by MDPI and the Open Access journal Sustainability, partially sponsored by the MDPI Sustainability Foundation. The event was also partnered with a wide range of our Open Access journals; see here for the full list.

The event was a huge success, boasting 181 registrations across global participants. The conference brought together a wide range of experts and leaders in sustainability research. There were six sessions led by an impressive lineup of speakers, including 8 keynote speakers and 5 invited speakers. Additionally, out of 355 submitted abstracts, 144 were accepted, which resulted in 75 short talks and 69 poster presentations. WSF was an international event with 53 countries being represented across all continents.

Importantly, the conference provides a stage to reward and recognise researchers who continue to advance sustainability efforts in remarkable ways. The World Sustainability Award (WSA) and the Emerging Sustainable Leader Award (ESLA) were both presented to the winners at the conference.

Please see the previous articles interviewing the WSF winners, Professor Dr Pimm and Dr Abdelbagi M. Ismail.

Organising the World Sustainability Forum

WSF is an impressive event whose success of this conference is shared with a wide range of people who played crucial roles in its development and execution. This includes the two chairs of the conference, Professor Dr Irene Petrosillo and Professor Dr Manuel Pedro Rodríguez Bolívar. The chairs worked closely with the event committee members to recruit inspiring leaders in the sustainability field to share their groundbreaking research.

The conference would not have been a colossal success without the carefully curated lineup of speakers, who organised specific sessions presenting their important research and findings, inspiring future researchers and projects in the field of sustainability. It’s also important to mention the World Sustainability Foundation’s selection committee, which worked behind the scenes to diligently select this year’s winners of the WSA and ESLA.

Here, we look at the important work of the winners of the ESLA awards: Professor Dr Vhahangwele Masindi, Dr Katya Rhodes and Professor Dr Myriam Ertz, detailing how their research has impacted sustainability efforts.

Professor Dr Vhahangwele Masindi

Professor Dr Vhahangwele is a distinguished professor at the University of South Africa, South Africa. His research focuses on water treatment. He is an innovator, and his work investigates new sustainable solutions to water treatment, which includes integrated water resource management. Moreover, his work is predominantly concentrated on water security, climate change mitigation and adaptation. He has pioneered the development and implementation of various technologies in water treatment and valorisation.

Professor Dr Vhahangwele Masindi endeavours to foster and drive the global agenda of enhancing water security for all. This includes focusing on circular economy, zero-liquid emission systems, closed-loop systems, and waste beneficiation and valorisation in water and wastewater management and treatment.

Sustainable water treatment

Access to clean drinking water is a privilege and a right that not everybody on the earth can easily access. Furthermore, the purification process of water can result in the production and release of harmful chemicals to the environment. These processes can also be costly in money and energy, also causing detrimental effects to the environment.

Professor Dr Vhahangwele Masindi’s research combines these key needs, providing safe drinking water to all via sustainable methods. This involves focusing on areas such as South Africa, which suffered severe pollution from major sources of groundwater during the Industrial Revolution. This included pollution via acid mine drainage, municipal wastewater, and seepage from pit latrines and septic tanks.

Professor Dr Vhahangwele Masindi’s contribution to sustainable water treatment includes environmental monitoring of these groundwater contaminants as well as establishing sustainable wastewater treatment solutions to implement in these areas.

“The inspiration for my work derives from deep concern about the fact that nearly 900 million people lack access to safe drinking water, according to the United Nations General Assembly, which explicitly recognised, through Resolution 64/292, the human right to water and sanitation and acknowledged that clean drinking water and sanitation are essential to the realisation of all human rights,” Dr Vhanangwele Masindi.

Dr Katya Rhodes

Dr Katya Rhodes is an associate professor at the School of Public Administration and the Institute for Integrated Energy Systems at the University of Victoria, Canada. She is the lead on the Zero-Emissions Sustainability Team (ZEST), which focuses on topics of low-carbon economy transitions and climate policy design using survey tools, energy-economy models, media and content analysis.

Moreover, Dr Katya Rhodes has held important positions advising sustainable policy to the Canadian government as a member of Canada’s Sustainable Development Advisory Council. This includes providing policy advice on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. As well as this, she has previously served as the president of the Canadian Society for Ecological Economics.

Advocating for changes in climate policy

Dr Katya Rhodes’ research is dedicated to improving climate policy and ensuring that the government is accountable for its continuous development. Additionally, she is passionate and dedicated to ensuring that government policies align with and contribute to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The SDGs are part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all United Nations members in 2015. This agenda provides a blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future. There are 17 SDGs that build on decades of work by countries all around the globe, as well as the UN.

Dr Katya Rhodes is currently focused on ensuring that Canada achieves net-zero emissions targets: to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 40% below 2005 levels by 2030 and to net-zero by 2050.

“The climate crisis is getting worse and worse. My vision is to reduce climate change in British Columbia, Canada, and worldwide. For that, we need compulsory and politically acceptable climate policy.” There are multiple ways to achieve Canadian climate targets. What we’re interested in is understanding characteristics of public support around alternative options,” – explains Dr Katya Rhodes.

Professor Dr Myriam Ertz

Professor Dr Myriam Ertz is a professor of marketing at the University of Quebec at Chicoutimi, Canada. Additionally, she also holds important roles as Director of the Laboratory of Research on New Forms of Consumption (LaboNFC) as well as the Canada Research Chair in Technology, Sustainability and Society, and is co-responsible for the Research Network on the Circular Economy of Quebec (RRECQ).

Professor Dr Myriam Ertz’s research focuses on responsible marketing, pro-environmental behaviour and sustainable digitalisation.

Professor Dr Myriam Ertz’s research and work have provided much-needed insight to deepen our understanding of responsible consumption and marketing, as well as collaborative consumption and the circular economy. Additionally, her research has developed the area of digital marketing and technology and innovation, focusing on product lifetime extension and notably contributing to Industry 4.0, which is also referred to as the Fourth Industrial Revolution or 4IR.

Product lifetime extension

Sustainability strategies are being considered and implemented in all fields, including digital marketing and technology. One example of this is product lifetime extension, which is a strategy that aims to increase the longevity of functional items by repair, upgrades, refurbishment and resale rather than complete replacement of products.

This strategy is key to adopting the sustainable economic model known as the circular economy, designed to eliminate waste and keep resources for as long as possible, promoting the recycling of products and materials. Professor Dr Myriam Ertz specialises in product lifetime extension from a consumer point of view, focusing on extending the lifespan of digital health devices in the healthcare industry.

“I have expertise in the way through which patients and other end users interact with digital health devices and other health devices throughout their lifecycle, and how this process can be optimised to spur circularity. This is important as patients rely increasingly on digital health devices such as trackers, health apps or other related telemedicine systems. It will thus be important to understand how consumers are, for example, willing to use reused or reutilised or recycled devices to decrease the need for new objects and discard existing ones.” – Professor Dr Myriam Ertz explains.

Preparing for the 12th World Sustainability Forum

The preparations for the 12th WSF have already begun, building on the success of WSF 11, aiming to once again bring together global leaders and researchers in the field of sustainability. WSF 12 will be held in Hong Kong from 21 to 24 August 2026.

WSF 12 will also celebrate pioneers and leaders in the sustainability field by presenting the World Sustainability Award and Emerging Sustainability Leader Award. Please see our recent article for more information on the history of the awards.

Nominations for the Sustainability Awards 2026

The WSA 2026 will honour one individual researcher whose work has made a transformative academic or societal contribution to sustainability, whether broadly or in relation to a specific sustainability-relevant issue. The recipient will receive amonetary prize of 100,000 USD, which will be officially presented during the 12th World Sustainability Forum (WSF-12).

The nomination must be submitted by a third party familiar with the nominees work and impact. Please see here for information regarding the nomination process and criteria.

The ESLA 2026 will also honour one outstanding early-career researcher, within 10 years of completing their PhD, who has made an exceptional academic or societal contribution to sustainability, whether broadly or in relation to a specific sustainability-relevant issue.

Please see here for information regarding the nomination process and criteria. The recipient will receive a monetary prize of 20,000 USD. The award will be officially presented during WSF-12.

The nominations for WSA and ESLA 2026 opened on 25July and will remain open until 15 December. If you want to nominate someone for the WSA award or would like to be considered for the ESLA award 2026, please see here for more information.

We look forward to welcoming you all to WSF 12! If you would like to submit your abstract for the conference, please see here.