Nathalie Bertrams is an award-winning freelance photographer and journalist reporting mainly from Africa and Eastern Europe.

Her focus areas are global trade, biodiversity, environment and climate change. She publishes in international media including Al Jazeera, The Guardian, BBC News, Süddeutsche Zeitung, De Groene Amsterdammer, NRC Handelsblad and Mongabay. She is a 2018 and 2021 National Geographic Explorer, was awarded the 2015 Lorenzo Natali Media Prize and was shortlisted for the Fetisov Journalism Awards for Outstanding Investigative Reporting in 2021. 

Nathalie Bertrams

Basic information

Name
Nathalie Bertrams
Title
Photojournalist
Expertise
Global trade, biodiversity, environment and climate change
Country
Germany
City
Aachen
Twitter
@NBertrams
Links

Supported projects

Baltic peat, Dutch profits, and carbon emissions

VILJANDIMAA — The peat trade implies big profits. At the same time, extracting peat is carbon intensive and destroys biodiversity. This investigation looks at how this business is especially lucrative for the Netherlands that do not just trade but also mine peat in Latvia and Estonia.

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Dirty Rubber

  • Environment
  • Exploitation

KOUNGOULOU - Europe’s growing demand for natural rubber to produce tyres has been destroying West Africa’s rainforests for large-scale industrial rubber plantations. In Cameroon, rubber conglomerate Halcyon Agri, which also sells rubber to the European Union (EU), has cleared at least 127 km2 of primary rainforest. The rubber market is growing steadily and is expected to exceed $50 billion by 2027.

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How exotic birds are trafficked from Guinea into the EU via Serbia

  • Environment
  • Trafficking

GUINEA/SERBIA/THE NETHERLANDS - According to Europol, the smuggling of songbirds and other tropical birds to the European Union (EU) has skyrocketed in recent years, especially along the Balkans trafficking route.

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Is the EU’s craze for lithium fueling destructive mining operations in Serbia?

  • Environment
  • Industry
  • Politics

BELGRADE - In Serbia, there is a lot of lithium, money and political interest at stake. Under the farming lands of its Jadar valley, geologists from mining giant Rio Tinto found Europe's largest lithium deposits - an amount enough to produce at least one million electric car batteries a year. 

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