The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) is a new sponsor to the Sustainability Leadership Award. The award, launched in 2001 by Sustainability Asset Management (SAM) and the Sustainable Performance Group (SPG), honors extraordinary leadership by individuals working within or in cooperation with the private sector to make sustainability happen.
The international annual award, which carries a price sum of CHF 50.000, is based on a variety of selection criteria, including:

Real leadership in relation to making sustainability work within or in cooperation with the private sector
Proven impact of the initiative
Strong, convincing personality with future scope of impact
Innovativeness of pursued ideas, projects or institutions
Significance for followers and multiplying effects
Potential for communication
Nominations for the award will be accepted until 15 June 2004. The award will be presented at the Sustainability Forum in Zurich on 26 August 2004.

Previous winners include Ray Anderson, CEO Interface Inc. (2001), Dr. Michael Otto, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Otto, and José Maria Figueres Olsen, former President of Costa Rica (2002) and Tessa Tenant, co-founder of the Jupiter Ecology Fund, the first sustainability fund in the United Kingdom (2003).