Awards & Honors

Dr. Zhifu Mi of University College London was awarded the 2018 World Sustainability Award. The other recipient was Dr. Mathis Wackernagel, founder and president of the Global Footprint Network. Dr. Mi and Dr. Wackernagel will share a USD 100,000 prize in recognition of their academic achievements and social impact in carbon footprint and ecological footprint research. Dr. Mi was invited to give a keynote presentation at the Beijing Summit of the World Sustainability Forum on methods and applications for consumption-based carbon emissions accounting.

The World Sustainability Award, supported by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network and sponsored by the Swiss multidisciplinary digital publishing group MDPI, recognizes individuals or organizations that have made outstanding academic and social contributions to sustainability. No more than three recipients are selected each year. Sustainability is understood as the interdependence of the economy, society, and the environment in pursuit of mutually beneficial regional and global development. It involves interdisciplinary research dedicated to achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

The World Sustainability Award is announced annually at the World Sustainability Forum. The forum is an international conference supported by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network and was held in China for the first time this year. Participants included Sha Zukang, former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations; Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network; Alain Gaschen, Deputy Head of Mission at the Embassy of Switzerland in China; Wang Jiaqiong, President of the University of International Business and Economics; Deng Jihai, President of the International Green Economy Association; and other experts from China and abroad. Last year, the World Sustainability Forum was held in South Africa, where the award recipients were Professor Jeffrey Sachs and Dr. Sonia Sachs of Columbia University.

Recipient profile: Dr. Zhifu Mi is affiliated with the Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management at University College London (UCL) and serves as an associate editor of the SCI journal Journal of Cleaner Production (impact factor 5.651). His research focuses on climate change economics, energy policy, and input-output analysis. Over the past five years, he has published more than 30 SCI/SSCI papers in journals including Science Advances, Nature Geoscience, and Nature Communications, including five ESI hot papers and eleven ESI highly cited papers. He received the Applied Energy Highly Cited Original Paper Award in 2016 and the Environmental Research Letters Best Early Career Scholar Paper Award in 2017. He was invited by Oxford University Press to write a review article on integrated assessment models for climate change. He has also been invited to attend the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Brazil in 2012 and the United Nations climate change negotiations in Peru in 2014 and Morocco in 2016. In addition, he has served as guest editor for journals including Applied Energy (SCI), Mathematics and Computers in Simulation (SCI), and Structural Change and Economic Dynamics (SSCI).