The Italian sustainability photo award (Ispa) is a competition born in 2019 from the collaboration between the Parallelozero photo agency and Pimco, a bond investment management company. Ispa aims to reward works that explore the theme of sustainability on several levels: environmental, social and in government choices. In particular, the selected works focus on positive stories, where research projects are born.
There are three categories in the competition: single photo, photographic history and the most important prize, the development of a project. The latter was won by Tomaso Clavarino, who with Have you ever heard the sound of falling rocks? traveled for six months along the Alpine arc between Italy, France, Switzerland and Austria, where the increase in temperatures is causing the melting of the permafrost, the most superficial part of the earth’s crust in the cold regions of the planet. This phenomenon has serious consequences on the health of the mountains, on the rocks that make them up, because the ice acts as a glue and if it starts to fail, the increase in landslides and collapses is inevitable.
“The mountains, and the Alps in particular” explains Clavarino, “have always had a significant weight in my life. I have seen them change over the years. I have seen slopes collapse, torrents swell ferociously, snowfalls change drastically, glaciers retreat, the rock becomes more unstable, animals change their habits, men having to adapt to different climatic conditions and ever more extreme weather events”.
Elisabetta Zavoli was awarded the photographic story with Ancient crafts and new generations: the future of fishing is sustainable, in which he talks about Tomas Parenti, a young fishing boat captain in Rimini who designed a fishing net with two pockets, capable of collecting fish but also waste dispersed at sea. Valeria Scrilatti won the prize for the single photo with the shot of a barn owl, an endangered species, in the Lipu wildlife recovery center in Rome, where more than five hundred birds are treated every year.
The other finalists of the competition are the duo Jean-Marc Caimi and Valentina Piccinni, Valerio Bellavia, Emiliano Cerluini, Paola Lai, Christian Velcich and Matteo Capone.