This stunning image — the most voted by the public for the Wildlife Photographer of the Year award, the historic competition of the London Natural History Museum — is both dramatic “icon” of the rapidity of climate change.
Global warming is an increasingly evident reality and even animals struggle to adapt: once uncontaminated places such as the Svalbard Islands, a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, thus become a privileged scenario of the changes taking place.
The melting of the ice is now an epochal phenomenon and denotes all the fragility of “nost common home”.
The image, a touching reminder of the speed with which the ice sheets are melting, wants to be an inspiration to reverse course.
The winner, British amateur photographer Nima Sarikhani, hoped that, since climate change is the “bigger challenge we face,” this photo will inspire hope.