Sutherland Shire Environment Centre holds an annual, national Writing for the Environment prize in honor of our founder, Bob Walshe, who passed away in March 2018.

Through the RD Walshe Memorial Writing for the Environment Prize, Sutherland Shire Environment Centre continues to value the role and place of the art of writing in bringing about change in issues of social justice and the environment. Writing offers a chance to reflect on these problems and their causes, as well as on the solutions and their causes.

This year’s competition intends to attract quality writing that can inspire or inform or incite change towards a more peaceful and sustainable world – healthy people living on a healthy planet.

Theme

Peace and Sustainability

As these words are being typed, there are many dozens of conflicts taking place including wars in Afghanistan, Darfur, Syria as well as Yemen. There are varieties of wars we can view in our world:

• • Ideological wars
  • Civil wars
  • Wars on terror
  • Wars on drugs
  • Insurgencies
  • Skirmishes
  • Power struggles within the government
  • Assassination attempts on politicians
  • The assassination of peace activists or opposition party leaders
  • Conflict everywhere
  • Deaths in the hundreds of thousands
  • State against external state, faction against internal faction
  • Wars by governments on their peoples and environment.

Such conflicts kill efforts to repair, protect or maintain the quality of the local environment. Victory-at-all-costs control mind, money, as well as manpower in too many places around the world.

Destructive conflict at some level is, sadly, inevitable. However, without some level of peace and security, it is fanciful to think of building a sustainable world; a world worth living in.

The 2022 competition invites writers or those who want to write to submit a fictional piece of prose on the topic of peace and sustainability.

Categories

1. Up to 18 years
2. 19-25 years
3. Over 65

Note: The submission form asks for your birthdate. Your age on the closing day of the competition is the age that counts.

Submission Criteria

• The author must be an Australian citizen.
• For 2022 Writing for the Environment competition, the Sutherland Shire Environment Centre will accept writing that is:
  1. A piece of fictional prose that is no more than 800 words in length
  2. Original and on the theme
  3. Creative, powerful, as well as quirky
  4. In addition, clear in purpose

Please submit entries online via this link ➤ RD Walshe Memorial Writing for the Environment Prize 2022 Submission

Furthermore, if you have any questions please email Phil Smithin the mail given below.