Three finalists in six categories have qualified for the voting stage
IAPH is delighted to announce the finalists in the six areas of interest of it’s World Ports Sustainability Program (WPSP) for the #IAPH2025 #Awards competition. The following eighteen shortlisted projects which have been selected by the appointed independent expert jury.
Public voting online is now open
These outstanding projects have been chosen by our expert jury from a long list of 112 eligible projects, who have scored them based on the agreed evaluation criteria. All of these have been added to the publicly-available projects database on the WPSP portal.
The IAPH World Ports Sustainability Program (WPSP) now contains over 500 best practices covering all seventeen UN Sustainable Development Goals.
IAPH technical director and WPSP coordinator Antonis Michail commented: “the geographical spread of projects submitted this year is truly global, and we see many ports now submitting more than one initiative. We expect the overall results to be quite close in many of the categories, so as we have seen in the past, the public vote can make all the difference.”
In order to take part in the public vote, people have the chance to review the details of all the projects before submitting their choice for each category. The outcome of the public vote (30%), together with that of the Jury evaluation (70%) will co-determine the winners of the Awards.
The voting will remain open until midnight Central European Summer Time (CEST) on 5 September, giving everyone a month to make their choices and to verify their choices online. A seventh prize, the Akiyama Award, will also be go to the highest-placed IAPH Sustainability Awards finalist runner-up from a Least Developed Country, or a Small Island Developing State.
The #IAPH2025 Sustainability Awards jury
An expanded jury this year for the #IAPH2025 Sustainability Awards
This year the expert jury appointed to score the projects include some new faces who joined the expanded group of fifteen judges. These include (in alphabetical order, left to right, top to bottom):
Mark Assaf – Chief TrainForTrade – UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD)
Sandra Chiri – International Outreach Manager – Shipping Emissions Ocean Conservancy
Sanjam Gupta – Director – Sitara Shipping Pvt. Ltd and Executive Board member, WMU
Geraldine Knatz, Ph.D. – Professor of Practice – USC Viterbi School of Engineering and Sol Price School of Public Policy, University of Southern California
Eranda Kotelawala – Maritime Processes Re-engineering Consultant and former IAPH regional VP for South east Asia and Oceania
Felicity Landon – Freelance Journalist and regular contributor to Ports & Harbors
Wei Jie Lau – Director, Partnerships – Global Centre for Maritime Decarbonisation (GCMD)
Professor Maximo Q. Mejia Jr – President, World Maritime University (WMU)
Gerald Munjanganja – Commercial Manager – Seatrade Chartering B.V.
Namrata Nadkarni – Founder and CEO – Intent Communications and former editor, Ports & Harbors
Vilosh Naido – Sector Specialist, Transport Infrastructure – Development Bank of South Africa (DBSA)
Ines Nastali – Maritime Expert and former editor, Ports & Harbors
Thanos Pallis – Professor in port and maritime economics and policy, Department of Port Management and Shipping – University of Piraeus
Katharine Palmer – Shipping Lead – UN Climate Champions team and Global Head of Sustainability, Lloyd’s Register
Gordon Wilmsmeier – Director Center for Shipping and Global Logistics (CSGL) – Kühne Logistics University
The expert jury will feature in the next conference edition of the IAPH membership magazine Ports & Harbors. IAPH Managing Director Patrick Verhoeven commented: “we would like to extend our warmest thanks to expert jury members, past and present, who make such an important contribution to our annual awards scheme. The competition continues to grow in number of entries, diversity and above all, quality. We wish all the finalists the very best and look forward to announcing the winners at the Gala Awards dinner on 8 of October at the IAPH 70th Anniversary World Ports Conference, in Kobe , Japan.”
To vote for your own selection (one person, one vote) visit:
