Dubai International Best Practices Award For Sustainable Development

Deadline: August 13, 2023

Established in 1995—under the directive of the late Sheikh Maktoum Bin Rashid Al Maktoum during the United Nations International Conference in Dubai—as an outcome of the Dubai Declaration. This declaration created the international concept of sharing Best Practices for the accelerated development of the human settlements sector. 

The Dubai International Best Practices Award for Sustainable Development has continued to receive support from H.H. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai and H.H. Sheikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Deputy Ruler of Dubai, Minister of Finance and Industry and Chairman of Dubai Municipality.

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Now reaching its 25th year, the award recognizes the world’s best practices that demonstrate valuable contributions to sustainable urban development, as a result of effective partnerships between public, private, and civic sectors in these areas:

1. Urban Regeneration and Public Spaces: Urban regeneration brings back underutilized assets and redistributes opportunities, increasing urban prosperity and quality of life. Public space is considered the backbone of cities. They are crucial for achieve sustainable cities and inclusive communities: providing ecosystem services, improving health and wellbeing, ensuring social inclusion and economic exchange.
   This category caters for addressing the cities of the future; finding ways in which cities ensure to provide affordable housing and access to food, water, clean air, mobility, public life and nature for continuously more numerous urban populations.
2. The most iconic, sustainable, innovative and smart building in the world: Sustainable and iconic building development require holistic local and life cycle data analysis in designing true bioclimatic and responsive developments, to make it a distinctive mark in the world. They balance preserving resources, habitats, heritage, visual appeal and optimizing wellbeing, quality, affordability, and performance.
   This category caters to recognize most iconic, smart, innovative, human-centric sustainable projects that combine green design and construction practices with modern, intelligent architectural excellence in an innovative eco-human-cultural approach.
3. Sustaining Urban Food Systems: Food security is defined as the state of having reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable and nutritious food.
   This category caters for systemic change and much improved access to food by all people while maintaining a strong connection between food production, storage and supply to local, regional and global beneficiaries showing an impact on human settlements.
4. Addressing Climate Change and Reducing Pollution: Living environment is defined as the natural world, as a whole or in a particular geographical area, especially as affected by human activity.
   This category caters for solutions addressing climate change, pollution reduction, and the protection of a thriving biodiversity including long-term multilevel governance mechanics, stakeholder engagement, disaster management, and circular economy.
5. Urban Infrastructure Planning and Management: Infrastructure is defined as the basic physical and organizational structures and facilities (e.g. buildings, roads, power supplies, etc.) needed for the operation of a society or enterprise.
   This category caters for finding adaptable, local and resilient solutions, that will enable longer lifecycle of infrastructure, due to the fast-paced transformations in line with the 4th industrial revolution relying on innovative, futuristic and sustainable projects improving living conditions.

Eligibility Criteria

The award is open to all sectors: national and regional governments, local authorities and their associations, non-governmental organizations, multilateral agencies, community based organizations, research and academic institutions, public and private foundations, media entities and individuals.

Application Registration Deadline: 31st August 2023

To Apply: Click here
Official Website: Click here