Esteemed members of this year's Judging Panel include Mrs. Nadine Gouzée, Coordinator of the Task Force ‘Sustainable Development' for the Government of Belgium and Chair of this year's competition, Mrs. Selene Biffi, Coordinator of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development Major Group Children and Youth, Dr. Anne-Marie Crétiéneau, Université de Poitiers, Dr. Mark Whitehead, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, Mrs Leida Rijnhout, Vlaams Overleg Duurzame Ontwikkeling (VODO), Dr. Ron Van Duin, Delft Institute of Technology and Mrs. Nadia Weeks, Editor of ENDS Europe Report, UK/Italy. 

A first round selection will be done to eliminate any essays which do not meet the competition's basic evaluation criteria.  The evaluation criteria used for this pre-selection have been agreed with the Chair of the independent Judging Panel and any essays rejected in this pre-selection process will be supplied to the Chair for verification that elimination has been based on the agreed criteria.

Chair
Nadine Gouzée Head of the Sustainable Development Taskforce, Federal Planning Bureau, Belgium Nadine Gouzée is an international expert on sustainable development, having chaired a number of projects and workshops on the subject including at the United Nations.
Judges
Mrs. Selene Biffi Founder of Youth in Action for Change UN Commission on Sustainable Development - Major Group on Children and Youth Coordinator Selene Biffi is the founder of Youth Action for Change.  She has served with the UN, Amnesty International and AEGEE in the past in different capacities, supervising projects aimed at empowering young people in different areas. Selene holds a Degree in International Economics and Management from Università Bocconi (Italy) and she is currently pursuing the NOHA Master in International Humanitarian Action in Ireland.
Nadia Weekes Editor of ENDS Europe Report, UK/Italy A journalist by training, Nadia Weeks has worked on a number of publications, including the Global Water Report (Financial Times), where she contributed articles on business, utilities and the environment. She has extensive experience as an editor, and functioned in this role for the monthly trade magazine Water Services, the business magazine Utility Europe, and her current employer ENDS, a specialist publisher of environmental information.
Leida Rijnhout Vlaams Overleg Duurzame Ontwikkeling (VODO), Belgium Leida Rijnhout is a social anthropologist, who studied at the University of Utrecht and Wageningen.  She has worked in the sector of international cooperation for ten years, focusing on farmer organisations in Latin America. Since 2000, she is the director of VODO, the Flemish Platform on Sustainable Development.  Within VODO Ms Rijnhout is responsible for global topics such as ecological debt, environmental justice, ecological economics and indicators.
Dr Mark Whitehead University of Wales Geography Department, Aberystwyth, UK Dr Mark Whitehead is a Senior Lecturer in environmental geography at Aberystwyth University and Senior Research Fellow at the CITY Institute in Toronto. His research focuses on questions of urban and regional sustainability and he has also written widely on the role of states within environmental management systems. He is the Vice-Chair of the Political Geography Research Group of the Royal Geographical Society and is on the Editorial Board of the Journal Social and Cultural Geography.
Ron Van Duin Delft Institute of Technology, Netherlands Ron van Duin studied econometrics at the Erasmus University Rotterdam.  Following his studies, he worked on several logistic business problems at an operations research division of the national applied science organization (TNO). As an operational researcher, Mr Van Duin is specialised in simulation and decision support systems.  During the last fifteen years he has been working as Assistant Professor in Logistics.  His main research interest is policymaking for urban freight transport, within which he focuses on specific challenges such as liveability, accessibility, economics, and environmental friendliness.
Dr Anne-Marie Crétiéneau Université de Poitiers, France Dr Anne-Marie Crétiéneau has since 1992 been Associate Professor at the Department of Economics at the University of Poitiers.  She is a member of CEDES (Centre of Social and Economic Development Studies), one of the teams of the Research unit on Industry and Innovation (Lab.RII). Dr Crétiéneau was awarded a PhD for her thesis on post-socialist economic transition. Her research interests also include sustainable development with a specific focus on the links with individual survival strategies and economic and social agents' responsibility.