Supported projects

ALMERÍA - At the far end of Europe, on the southern border of Spain, lies Almería. It is a huge province completely covered with white plastic, harbouring Europe’s largest vegetable garden. It is the place where our tomatoes come from, even in winter. But under all the plastic, strange things happen…

ENONTEKIO - The Arctic region is warming up four times as fast as the global average. This impacts people and animals.

ÚSTI NAD LABEM / LANDAU - The 'lithium fever' has devastated the landscape in Bolivia, Chile and Argentina, among others. Europe is trying to mine its own lithium deposits in an environmentally friendly way: using geothermal energy. Germany is already experimenting with it in the Upper Rhine Valley. 

PUERTO BAQUERIZO MORENO - A visual documentation of the human history of Galápagos and its first inhabitants, who bore witness to the development of the last century.

ANTWERP - There are many forgotten disasters around the world, but one day they will be in the news again. Are we prepared for when the alert levels reach code red again?

DAMASCUS - The Mesopotamia, an ancient cradle of civilisation, is formed by the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. But due to drought and the construction of Turkish dams, the rivers are in danger of drying up.

SUCRE - You cannot escape the smoke when driving through Bolivia during the dry season. Left and right, people burn their garbage and their fields. As such, fire has been used as an agricultural technique here for centuries - and increasingly out of control. 

COLOMBO - A Sri Lankan scientist, also a young mother, is trying to map the patterns of migrating coral larvae to protect the future of coral reefs and her people.

BRUSSELS - Two young people are growing up in a world that is destroying itself. They each seek their own path and test how far they are willing to go in their actions.

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.

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.

KAMPALA / DAR ES SALAAM - 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.

BRUSSELS/AMSTERDAM - 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?

BRUSSELS - Twenty years ago, the first SARS outbreak sounded the alarm. But Europe failed to prepare for the Covid-19 pandemic due to a lack of funding for drug research, and may still be unprepared for the next one, argue several prominent scientists interviewed by Stefano Valentino and Gian Paolo Accardo.

ANTWERPEN/ROTTERDAM - The social damage of air pollution caused by the (petro)chemical sector in the ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam runs into billions of euros. This is according to an investigation by Apache and Follow The Money based on official figures on emissions and transfer of pollutants from large industrial facilities.

ROTTERDAM - The Port of Rotterdam claims to champion sustainability but is the reality matching its marketing?

GEORGETOWN - On behalf of US oil giant ExxonMobil, Belgian company Jan de Nul (together with partners) is building an artificial island off the coast of Guyana, South America.

BELGIUM - The mythical wolf is back in Belgium. So are the eagle owl and the raven. The seal and the beaver. The tropical tree frog. Even the mysterious lynx. And who knows, soon the iconic brown bear? The list is impressive.

BAGDAD - Climate change is causing an exodus in Iraq of farmers whose land is drying up. They are moving with their water buffaloes or selling their livestock. The government does not know how to deal with climate migration, environmentalists are threatened and even kidnapped.

RIOHACHA - The world is facing a total energy transition, and Colombia, too, is joining the momentum.

BRUSSELS - You never wear one third of the clothes in your wardrobe. Another third you rarely ever put on. You have not touched nine out of ten outfits for a whole year. You throw away more clothes than any other European. And yet you keep buying new clothes. Because you feel that you need them. Because every morning you wake up and think you have nothing to wear.

COPENHAGEN - By 2050, the earth will have 10 billion inhabitants. At the same time, the area of available agricultural land per person is shrinking. As climate disrupts, classical farming systems are colliding with their limits.

HAVANA - The IPCC is clear: besides radically reducing emissions, the world must also prepare for the consequences of 1.5 degrees of warming of our atmosphere. How will we feed, shelter and protect ourselves in this heralded 'climate hell'?

KINSHASA - Although the Amazon forest is significantly larger, the tropical forests in the Congo Basin, in the heart of Africa, are taking more CO2 out of the air today. This seems like good news, but these forests are also disappearing at a rapid pace.