Vinyl 2010 Essay Competition 2008/9: "Faced with a food and energy crisis, how can society improve its well-being?" 

In this second essay competition based on a sustainable development theme, Vinyl 2010 had once again invited young people to express their views on one of the key challenges facing our planet by answering the following question: In the face of a food and energy crisis we are facing, how can we improve the living standards of the worlds growing population in a sustainable way?

At the competition submission deadline on the 31st of January, a total of 208 young people aged 18 to 30 years, from across Europe and around the world, had submitted Essays to this year’s competition, significantly increasing on the number of entries for the first year’s competition and surpassing the expectations of the organisers.

This year’s Competition was organised in conjunction with a wide range of partner organisations with interests in the field of sustainable development, including: www.cafebabel.com

The winners: 

Congratulations to the winners on behalf of Vinyl 2010 and the two judging panels! And a big thank you of course to all the participants – all of the essays were of a very high standard and the judges were extremely impressed.

The independent judging panel is pleased to announce the following winners, Jon Elms, Fiona Wright, and Robert McSweeney, all from the United Kingdom, for the European Prize Category, and Christian Williams from New Zealand for the Global Prize Category. The Special Industry Prize winner is Wei Chao Zhou from Singapore. All of the essays were of very high quality, presenting well-informed, strongly argued ideas. In the end the final winner were the ones that better presented constructive, well thought-out and realistic ideas that could make an actual impact on the debate on the food and energy crises.

To learn a little bit more about the winners, please click here (link to new section “winners”) or click on the individual winners below.

1st prize: Jon Elms / Essay 222
2nd prize: Fiona Wright / Essay 747

3rd prize: Robert McSweeney / Essay 313

For the non-EEA / global category, the prize goes to:

Christian Williams / Essay 738

The industry prize (allocated by a separate judging panel consisting of industry representatives) goes to

Wei Chao Zhou / Essay 504

All the other essays can be viewed at www.vinyl2010essaycompetition.org

A book will be published containing the 40 short-listed finalists.

Finally, if you haven’t already, we encourage you to register to the Vinyl 2010 Essay Competition site and engage the winners and the other participants through debate about their work.   All the essays represents the source of ideas for dealing with the challenges that lie ahead in our common future and we would be very pleased if this platform could became permanent forum on Sustainable Development.

Once again thank you for your enthusiastic participation!

READ THE ENTRIES TO THE 2007/8 VINYL 2010 ESSAY COMPETITION

Click here to read the Essay Competition 2008/2009 in a ebook format

Click here to read the essay from the first Vinyl 2010 Essay Competition in the ebook format