Time.news – I am Valeria Scrilatti, Elisabetta Zavoli and Tomaso Clavarino the winners of the third edition of the Italian Sustainability Photo Award (ISPA), created in collaboration with PIMCO, one of the leading bond investment management companies in the world. The announcement was made as part of the event “The Economy of the future”, organized by Corriere della Sera.
Scrilatti won for the best single photo (prize 1,500 euros) which, we read in the motivation, “It portrays the iconic figure of a barn owl, a protected species in danger of extinctionsymbol of the delicacy of the ecosystem, and endangered by climate change, pollution, intensive agriculture, soil erosion and desertification”.
The photo of the raptor being treated – taken in the LIPU Wildlife Recovery Center in Rome – puts the spotlight on the protection of biodiversity in our country, which hosts about a third of the fauna present in Europe, with over 60,000 species. Every year in the center of Rome, LIPU treats over 500 falcons, owls, swallows, foxes, bats and other animals, having the conservation of nature as its main objective.
© Elisabetta Zavoli
Elizabeth Zavoli
In the Photographic History category, the project by Elisabetta Zavoli, “Ancient crafts and new generations: the future of fishing is sustainable” is the winner as it “investigates the problem of waste present in the sea, showing a possible solution through the exciting story of Tomas Parenti. Relatives at 25 years old, is the youngest fishing boat captain in the Rimini fleet, and has designed and tested a more efficient and sustainable fishing net capable of also collecting waste.
If implemented at a national level, this solution could contribute to cleaning up the sea, saving marine resources and making fishing more sustainable”. Tomaso Clavarino is the winner of the grant for the development of a photographic project with “Have you ever heard the sound of falling rocks?”.
“A six-month journey along the Alps – explains the motivation – where temperatures have been rising in recent years by 2 degrees Celsius, to analyze a phenomenon of great importance, but of which very little is said: the degradation of the permafrost, the surface part of the earth’s crust most in contact with all the phenomena that occur in the atmosphere; its degradation, due to the melting of the ice it contains, is a source of instability of the slopes and modifications of the hydrogeological circuit, with serious repercussions on the territory. The ice within the rock fissures acts like cement, holding parts of the mountain together, but as temperatures and freezing levels increase, stability decreases with a potential for more landslides and cave-ins, events that are increasingly occurring in all over the Alps. The effects of these changes and events are not reflected only on the environment, but also on the Alpine communities which have lived in a delicate balance in this fragile ecosystem for centuries”.
© Tomaso Clavarino Tomaso Clavarino 
ISPA – Italian Sustainability Photo Award – is the first international photographic competition that asks photography to tell the story of sustainability according to three themes: environment, society and governance. “We are satisfied with the good results obtained also in this third edition of ISPA”, commented Alessandro Gandolfi, Managing Director and responsible for Italy of PIMCO.
“In these three years the photographers have offered us excellent shots by telling the changes that are taking place in the environment and in our society, in line with our experiences in sustainable investing, and around the world more generally”.
“Telling about sustainability in Italy through images it was a courageous and innovative idea for Pimco as well as for Parallelozero”, declared Tiziana Ferrario, president of the jury.
“And yet, after three years and three editions of the competition, we can say that this great challenge has been won: the photographers who have participated in an ever-increasing number of the competition have described an unexpected country, attentive to research and innovation in strategic such as agriculture, the sea, the mountains, in harmony with the communities in which the projects shown are inserted. We asked to document positive stories in an Italy that is changing – continued Ferrario – not only the denunciation of the many problems with which we collide on a daily basis, but also the solutions chosen to solve them, and many images arrived in line with the spirit of the award which aims to show an Italy that look forward with resilience, creativity and competence”.
It was also awarded the role of Ambassador Lowepro to the photographer Paola Lai, for his work “Mediterranean Sea: The Odyssey of Sea Turtles”, a project that he followed the marine biologists working in Sardinia at the CReS – Sinis Recovery Center. Nikon, on the other hand, awarded the Nikon – Capture Tomorrow special prize to Elisabetta Zavoli’s photographic story, “Crime School”: a project on the theme of social recovery in the prison context, which according to the jury is fully combined with the concept of “capturing tomorrow “.