Supported projects

YANGAMBI - In the middle of Congo's tropical rainforest lies Yangambi, a nature reserve where scientists study climate change. To do so, they need an intact piece of forest. But that causes tensions with the local inhabitants, because they use the forest to survive.

TOKIO - In Japan, when people disappear overnight because of social pressure, financial, domestic or mental problems, they call it jōhatsu. Literally, it means evaporation. The phenomenon is not recognized in Japan, and so it stays under the radar. Robbe Van der Vloet and Arend Bucher travel to Japan in search of jōhatsu.

ST JOHN'S - Barbuda is paradise on earth: a small Caribbean island with beautiful beaches and clear waters full of fish and lobster. Worth noting: on Barbuda, land is not for sale. There is a system of communal land ownership. But cracks are appearing in that, now that property developers have their eye on the island.

COPSA MICA - It is December 1990, the days are short, dark and foggy. Beside the road in Copsa Mica, 2 men are slaughtering a pig. A Romanian Christmas tradition I later learn.

KIMINA - In 2006, British company Tullow Oil discovered oil reserves in the Albertine region in northwestern Uganda. In early 2022, Total signed an agreement with Tanzania and Uganda and Chinese state-owned CNOOC to begin construction of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP). The project will create the largest oil-heated pipeline with a length of 1,443 kilometers between Hoima in Uganda and Tanga in Tanzania, from where crude oil will be exported. But not without consequences.

Scientific publications, leaked company data and government data suggest that industry is doing everything possible to deliberately put up a fog curtain around these ultra short PFAS.

DODOMA - Many people are eager to help restore damaged or disappearing forests. But which projects actually contribute to carbon storage, biodiversity protection and quality of life for local people, and which ones make the problems worse?

DAMASCUS - In No Man's Land, Middle East expert Willem Staes travels across Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and Iraq. During nine trips between August 2021 and March 2023, he will see for himself how Syrian refugees find themselves in the most hopeless situation since the Syrian revolution in 2011.

UNITED STATES - Journalist Daan Ballegeer explores in the United States, the birthplace of the automobile, how that means of transportation has influenced our lives.

BRUSSELS - In an essay, French critic Roland Barthes called the car a magical object, consumed more as an image than an object of use. Can we still see the car as a magical object today?