In this episode of IFAI Talks, we’re joined by Franco Borgogno, environmental journalist, science communicator, photographer, and mountain guide. From the Italian Alps to Arctic expeditions, Franco has dedicated his life to unveiling the hidden connections between land, ocean, and human life.
With deep sensitivity, he brings science closer through experience, photography, and storytelling, showing us how even a rare spider in the Alps can be a signal of climate change.
We talk about how plastic pollution in remote places like the Arctic sparked his journey, The power of observation and “learning to look”, His work in the Alps, a hotspot of biodiversity and why connecting emotionally with nature is key to planetary health
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NL: So welcome to IFAI Talks our conversations on art innovation and social change, and this special edition of IFAI talks part of the social art award 2025, accompanying program, we are thrilled to welcome an inspiring guest, Franco Borgogno, environmental science communicator, researcher and photographer.
He also works at a European Research Institute, foundation in education and citizen science. Franco’s incredible work merges environmental conservation, art and photography, education and sustainability, creating a unique and sensitive way to connect people with nature.
Through his work, he raises awareness of the importance of protecting nature, and that IFAI Institute for art and innovation. We believe in the power of art to ignite change, and we are so glad to join forces with Franco to highlight a vital role of creatives in nature conservation, tune in as we explore his journey, the intersection of art and activism and how we can all contribute to a future where our oceans and we thrive. Stay with us for an inspiring conversation.
So welcome. Franco.
FB: Thank you. Thank you, Nicole. Thank you to all of the people that are looking at this interview.
NL: Yeah, and before we dive into your great world, can you please share a bit about your own background and what led you to this unique journey?
FB: I’m a journalist. I’m Italian, and I work in journalism, different field of journalism, in the last 35 years, and I have a deep passion for nature and for wildlife in particular, and in the last 20 years, I tried to work on this, first of all with photography, and then trying to have a most deeper knowledge, scientific knowledge, of this wonderful world. So I became a guide. And then starting as I can guide on the Alps, on the Italian Alps.
I face some problems. One of this was plastic pollution, when, when people, don’t know, as we know today, about this, this issue, and I find this news that a professor gave us very strange, because if the situation was as he told us,it was absolutely strange that no one talked about this. Then I searched for some data and scientific research about this, I found that it was true what he told us, and so I came to search for the opportunity to tell about this.
My first target was to tell a journalist about this. And I found I met. I met in 11 years ago, an institution, an American institution, five gyres, Institute, that is committed to this plastic pollution issue by years and is one of the most important to have the first data and about distribution of plastic on the ocean. I began to talk with them. I went on the first Arctic expedition with them, and then became this part of my life. In a couple of months, I was surprised, a sort of researcher and a science communicator. I wrote some books. These books have good success, and so now I work every day on this kind of communication, but also on sharing knowledge, sharing experience. The most part of my life is on the field. And so this is a very, very interesting packet for our talk. Also, yes.
NL: So maybe you can also share a bit more about your experience in the Arctic and how you get connected with the oceans and with water in general, and why this became such a serious field of research?
FB: Yes,I was involved in three Arctic expeditions with the scientist that is working on different kinds of research, oceanographic research, as A framework, and I was involved in making samples of micro plastic. And this kind of experience, it was very important for me, not only for my work, but for me.
First of all, because when you are in the Arctic, you feel nature in a very deep way. You can feel how we talk every day about, how much nature is strong, is rich,is beautiful, is various, but in in our daily life is we have to be very focused to better understand this, in the Arctic, as in other great part of our planet, I can think also in Amazonia forest or in a desert, you feel completely all this characteristic of the environment, the power, the beauty, variety and diversity.
And you can feel all and you can feel also that you are a part of this, but a very important part, but a very little part. And you can feel this in a very clear way, and this can gave me the push to the boost to make what I was there to do, the idea to share this experience, the idea to share, what it was so clear there, when we found the plastic items in the in the ice cap of North Pole, you can understand how our impact have consequences, also very far from the place where we have make the wrong action or the not right action, and the consequences are in every part of the environment. And you can feel and you can look and you can touch this in the Arctic, so it’s also easy to communicate, to share, and this point.
NL: Why do you think it’s so important for encouraging a deeper reflection on planetary health?
FB: Because it’s clear that planetary health is in relation to our health.
The planet will be safe also, if we destroy all the nature that we see around us, there is not a problem for the planet. And there is not a problem for nature as a general idea, as a general concept. The problem is for us. The problem is for the other kind of life in nature that we see around us today. This is a very important point when we talk about.
We have to make this choice for the future of the planet, but it’s not completely right. We have to make this choice for our future and for the future of the nature that we see around us today, the nature two billions of years ago on the planet, it was completely different, and we are not in that. We are not part of that nature and the birds, mammals, insects, plants that we see today were not part of that nature, but there were nature.
And so the future is for all the species that we see around us today and that we don’t see, but there are in this kind of life, and so we have it’s very important to have care, take care of the health of the planet for us, as is not to have an anthropocentric vision of the nature is wrong in in a way, but is normal in another way. If we think how a bird sees the planet, the bird sees in air, in its own vision there is the planet. Is the place where he live, not where they take care of themselves. And so it’s normal that also the human species are looking at the planet in this way.
NL: But how does your work challenge audiences to move beyond the observation? For instance, you discovered plastic pollution in the Arctic. But how do you move your audiences? And how do you make them perceive and feel the intricate web of relationships that sustain life on Earth? When it comes to, for instance, your photographic work.
FB: My first target is that people feel and touch and look at the relationships, the very, very, very wide net of relationships that there are between us, not as a human, between us, as organisms in the planet, also microscopic organisms that we can see every day. And this is the way that I think the people can move to the solution.
If we can talk one by one to all the people of the world, I’m sure that we can solve the problem. Okay? Because when you talk with one person and you can, we can together. I never teach something. I have an experience with them, and we try to learn to look and then look to learn. This is my way to work, learn to look because if we work on a project that is working on plastic pollution, example, the first thing that during a citizen science stage we have as a problem is that the people don’t see the waste Okay,and so we have to work for one hour, two hours to make them aware.
How they can find all the ways that there is. We are working from years in a project on the Alps, and 90% of the people that are hiking or climbing on the Alps are absolutely sure that there are no waste, or not great quantity of waste when we begin to hike, we have to
make them aware of how many ways there are, and this can also help them to see nature, the plants, the flowers, the birds, the insects. And this makes it easier to feel how diverse is nature around them? And so understand, talking, simply talking, catching the opportunity that we have every day. We don’t know when we start, what we will see, we start to work, or we start to swim, or we start to look around us. Sit down on the floor to search for details and talk about these details, how they are connected to our life and to our activity. Okay, so we can look at a leaf of the tree and see also in looking when we, when we learn to look better, we can see how, how and where they give us oxygen to breath, and how they and why they have that color on the leaf. Why in spring and summer are green, why in the autumn they are yellow or red? And now how we can have some colors to paint in this way. And so sometimes we can also try to do this with water, take some leaves, then boil the water with the leaf in, have a color, and try to include people that are involved in this activity, try, in some way to with that color, to design the experience and what they feel after that day.
This connection is absolutely necessary. Aren’t we? We are in a relationship, me and you. We are in relationships because we choose this. We choose to talk because we have an interest and we are happy to talk about this. But we can also not do this.
We can choose to do or not. We can’t choose to breathe or not to breathe. We can’t choose to have a relationship with the rocks on the seabed of the ocean. We can’t because they will be in some millions of years.
NL: Exactly. I mean here, maybe just to explain a little further to our audience, because you are working in the Italian marine Alps, and this idea that you just shared, maybe you can go a little bit into that, because not many people might know about marine Alps.
FB: Yeah, this part of the Alps, I work on many parts of the Alps, I worked in the past, on the Mediterranean, Mediterranean Sea along the rivers and all these parts are interesting, to search some connection, to search some life. There are two parts of nature that are perfect symbols of this connection and must have connection, okay, and these are mountains and the Alps in my personal experience, and the ocean.
The ocean is the engine of all of this, okay, but the Alps are the other part of the circuit to move on, because the Alps are the deposit of all what the ocean gave us. Okay, water and the sun are the two parts that make life possible: life just water and sun, nothing else. All the other things are a consequence of water and sun.
The 97% of the water on the planet is in the ocean. But we need freshwater, and freshwater is in the ice and a very important part in the mountains. The mountains are the deposit of all our opportunity to live. So there is a part of the Alps that is particularly rich, the most rich in biodiversity, the most rich part of biodiversity of the Alps is Maritime Alps. Maritime Alps is the southwestern extreme part of the Alps between Italy, France and Monte Carlo that mountain are the top of a chain that arrive down to the sea bed in The front of Monte Carlo ventilia to 3000 meters deep, with the continued chain until the top of Argentina Mountain is three the most, more than 3000 meter over the level of the sea.
“The 97% of the water on the planet is in the ocean. But we need freshwater, and freshwater is in the ice and a very important part in the mountains. The mountains are the deposit of all our opportunity to live.”.
So we have a 6000 meter of the Chain of Rocks, and this may possibly be an extraordinary biodiversity life, because we have the southernest glacier of The Alps at 30 kilometers from the Mediterranean Sea. This makes it possible to have some glacier species of flowers, for example, or insects and in a few meters, have Mediterranean species as a plant or as insects.
Again, this makes it possible to and you can see also on the floor. You can see fossils of ancient plankton in the rocks, this makes visible to all the continuous chain or circle of this natural phenomenon that gave us life. You can see the glacier that cave the rocks, the water that caved the rocks, the lichens that,in some way, cave the rocks and gave us this sand that is future soil that with the river, arrive on the plants, and we will have rich farming or energy or every kind of service that we need to make our life daily life in every kind of professional activities.
So make this experience on the field, if it’s possible. Spending days is the way to touch, feel and be aware of myself, not because someone taught me this by I learned together with other people every day, something in these incredibly rich relationships met. I can find the relation with the rocks. I can find the relation with the spider in that part of the Alps. There is a very rare spider that has been under great study in the last 10 years, because he is near extinction due the glacier melting. So we study this spider..
Many people hate spiders and many people think we don’t care about spiders. Why is the spider important to us? it’s important because the spider is moving a flag to tell us, hey, there is a problem, and we study how the spider adapted to the situation and which kind of problem born by the melting glaciers in its life, and so we can try to prevent the consequences on our life In next 20, 3050, 100 years, just studying the spider, it’s obvious that the problem is not the spider, but the problem is what the spider there is telling us. And so I try to share this in every possible way. I try to share this with the people that come to Ike with me. Yes, for 231 weeks or I try to share this with the photographs.
NL: Here, my question would be, how do you navigate this balance between the scientific rigor of your background and the artistic expression that is somehow needed both, I think, to communicate complex ecological ideas, but in the emotional way?
FB: So how do you navigate that? I’m lucky because I have many, many scientists that during these years are friends of mine and so I talked with them many hours. I shared with them ideas. I tried to hear what they told me about their experience, different experiences, not only the research, but their experiences.
The scientists have enormous knowledge of stories, and my work is to tell the story. And so I try to have the most to identify the most important point in a scientific way, at the in example, I at the beginning of my work on plastic pollution,
One of the first questions that I asked was to Marcus Ericsson, the founder of Jars Institute. I ask the team where the plastic island is and how I can see this big amount? And there isn’t a plastic island. There is a sort of soup of very small particles that are floating on the sea surface. And if you go there and you look around, you see blue.
If you look at the sea surface, you can see something. So the idea is very important because many people talk about when I met the people in a public event or during a citizen science experience, 80% of the people in a moment of the day tell me. Then there is also this plastic island as big as Iberian Peninsula. And why is it important to be correct? Because if these people are sure that there is an island and then they can’t see the island, there is not a problem.
Because if the problem is the island, if you can’t see the island, there is not the problem. So it’s very important to be clear and very correct with the information. So every time that I have an idea about some relationship or some detail in nature, I try to face some scientist that is a specialist on this area of environmental science and try to share my idea.
And if my idea is correct, I go over and try to, to realise the concept that I have in my mind, the photograph or the talk giving this definition or writing a book or an article and so on. And so it’s very important, in my opinion, it’s very important to be the maximum that you can correct in a scientific way. And you can be correct by studying, studying, studying and trying to talk with scientists or reading papers, scientific papers while trying to search. We know in the last years, there are for sure many problems with this worldwide sharing of information.
This is a problem in many ways. But this is also a big opportunity to have information and to share information. And obviously you will have to be very careful in searching the right information, so not the first one that you find. Searching and searching prove and searching confirm and so on do.
NL: You maybe can share a kind of strategy on how the perception of the importance of relationships and planetary health can be changed. You know, because sometimes I have the feeling that people don’t care about planetary health, so they are not connected. All what you were sharing was all about relationships and being in a relationship. But how so? How can we change the perception of the importance of relationships in planetary health? So what would be your strategy or your advice?
FB: My strategy is every time that I can to involve the people on the field. This is very, very important. I know that it’s difficult, but it’s absolutely necessary. Think about this. If the people can’t see something, the people don’t care about it.
If you protect a very precious painting from closing in a room and no one can see it for years, the only interest it will be of the robber, not for anything or anyone else, because after 1020 thirty years, no one will remember this and don’t care. So it’s difficult to find the right balance, but the people have the opportunity to experience nature everyday. And this is important also for our health, our physical and mental health.
Now it’s everyday, there is more evidence, scientific evidence of this also to cure some particular illness. It’s not easy. We are working on a project that has as a target the people that for budget reasons or cultural reasons or social reasons, can’t go to nature. First of all, you have to give them the opportunity to also arrive at an urban park and have an experience. Because if someone never tried to face nature they could be scared about this.
So it’s important to have some easy experience giving them the opportunity to face a tree, to face an animal, a wild animal. Many many people know just the cat or dogs that they have a tomb. There are many times in elementary school where teachers try to ask the children about the origin of an egg or the salad and many children don’t know or have a strange idea about this. So making this experience is the first part in making this experience, you can understand many simpler relationships.
You can see an apple tree, it’s very easy, but you can understand where the the apple that you eat in a in a cake arrive from and why is important the water, why there is the water in in the fruit? What is a fluid container of seeds? What are the seeds? Why animals? Why is it important that the animal eat the seeds? So many simple, very simple things that you can try to share with the people that have the opportunity to be in nature. The work is different.
We have to work on the perception of relationships because many people care about nature, but for a smaller reason, because the natural beauty is right and it’s very important, but it is not the first reason why we have to care about nature. The first reason is because we need nature. We and all, not only humans, we all the biodiversity on the planet need each one of the others. This is the definition of ecology. It’s a simple ecology and changing this approach also in the people that care about nature.
They can also change what they talk about nature to their friends. And again, what I said before, if we can talk to every single person, we can arrive at a solution. So this is very important to make experience and experience that can be pushed also from the storytelling and the storytelling not not only talking but with art. And this is.
NL: But here. But here may be my last question because time is always passing.
FB:Sorry I’m talking too much.
NL: No, no, no, all good. All good because all your thoughts really resonate a lot with me. But my last question would be, what are your hopes for more thoughtful collective action for planetary well-being? So maybe, yeah, now you can share your idea of storytelling and.
FB: My hope is that every person can experience some part of nature we can. This is another important point. We can see nature also in the city centre, the grass between the street or an insect.
This is nature and we have to learn to look at all of this moving through this nature, moving to face the daily problem of the people understanding that it’s connected to.This is the best way to evolve them to have the commitment of the biggest number of people in the solution. The solution is not one, the solution is moving to create and to think of the future in the right way and the right way is in the sustainable way, because sustainable is what can make available for others in years the resources that I have today.
The best definition that I know about sustainability is the relationship between the prey and the predator. The first interest of a predator is that the prey is safe and the first interest of the prey is that the predator is alive because they can. The presence of the other of the opposite makes possible the balance. If there is a predator eating today the prey tomorrow will be dead and if the prey has no predator in 10 years they will have no food because they ate all.
So this is the opportunity to have all the people to face this experience and to transmit to the other their experience in some art. They can talk, they can sing, they can paint, they can create food.
Also, if they don’t know the experience and the awareness to use art to share this experience is the way that we can develop in many kinds of projects that involve different targets in this kind of experience that can be science can be such or sustained that can be healthcare. Every kind of opportunity is perfect to evolve and to evolve to the future.
NL: Wonderful. Yeah. This conversation has been truly inspiring. Thank you for joining us, Franco.
FB: Thank you. Thank you very much to you.
NL: And if you are inspired by Franco’s story, check out the Social Art Award 2025 and submit your work. Share this episode and let’s create a sustainable and artful future together. Until next time, this was IFAI talks.
More information about Franco Borgogno:
https://www.francoborgogno.com/