Supported projects

NIEUWKERKE - Belgium is the world's largest exporter of frozen potato products. And that takes a lot of potatoes. An unprecedented Belgian success story. What does the chain look like behind that bag of frozen croquettes or that large packet of chips?

HASSELT - Hunting of wild boar in Flanders increases exponentially. Despite restrictive measures because of the coronavirus, 2,196 wild boars were shot in 2020. More than twice as many as in 2016. Many hunters have been using modern, prohibited hunting tools such as night vision goggles in recent ...

CONAKRY - Every year, hundreds of thousands of discarded and polluting cars from all over Europe are shipped from Belgium to West Africa. There the wrecks, which pose a threat to the health and safety of the population, can continue to travel hundreds of thousands of kilometres. Attempts to tackle ...

ANTWERP/ROTTERDAM - Heavily contaminated plastic waste from the Netherlands and the rest of Europe can be illegally exported via the port of Antwerp, unnoticed by inspectors, to countries where it ends up being dumped. Antwerp is an important hub for the international trade in plastic waste. But ...

BAMAKO - After Afghanistan and Iraq, burn pits also seem to have appeared in around western military camps in Mali. In 2014, an extensive air study was conducted by Professor Yacouba Toloba, head of the pulmonology department at the Point G hospital in Bamako. The concentrations of fine dust around ...

The oil industry continues to try and expand in Kenya, but there is an urgent need for stricter enforcement and adherence to the rules designed to keep the public and environment safe from the extraction industry’s impacts. The journalists continue to investigate the impact on Kenya from the ...

FREETOWN - Fish exported from Sierra Leone to Italy is exposed to allegedly illegal trawling that the Italian government seems unwilling to scrutinize.

MINA DO BAROSSO - Lithium is the raw material we need en masse for batteries, including electric cars. Under Portuguese soil there is a lot of that 'white gold'.

BRUSSELS - Europe's Natura 2000 protected areas are groaning under nitrogen emissions from livestock farming. Meanwhile, farmers near nature reserves fear for their future. Due to conflicting policy choices, agriculture and nature conversation have become diametrically opposed. The call for a long ...

STEKENE - It is not allowed to live in a recreation area. Yet people still live in a chalet or a caravan, or sometimes in a brick weekend residence. Sometimes these are people who find themselves in precarious financial circumstances. Pensioners, people coming out of a divorce, people who are ill ...

AMSTERDAM - Illegally logged teak from South Sudan goes to India where it is made into furniture before it could end up in stores in Europe. Indian timber traders illegally source the timber from East Africa and export it as an 'Indian' product after processing.

CAPE TOWN - As dam levels dropped rapidly at the end of 2017 and Cape Town faced the looming threat of becoming the first major city where taps would run dry, households were forced to pull out all the stops to save water. But Coca Cola and other big industrial users were given a free pass.

ACCRA, ABUJA – This investigation exposes a hidden network of Chinese control and ownership of many industrial fishing vessels operating in Ghanaian and Nigerian waters in contravention of local laws.

DAVOS / ROSTOCK / GOTHENBURG - Climate change is making European summers ever drier and hotter, and not just in the south: During the extremely dry summer of 2018, the drought was mostly limited to the part of Europe north of the Alps. In many places, the summers of 2019 and 2020 were again ...

SOMONIYON - Tajikistan has abundant water resources and has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in improving access to and supply of water. However, millions of Tajik residents still struggle to access running water, let alone clean water.

BRAKEN - The Belgian town of Braken, on the Dutch border, is home to 1.2 million chickens. They divide the town: residents are tired of the smell, the fine dust and the heavy traffic in their village. To objectify the discussion, the local government ordered an air quality study.

HARARE - Gold is Zimbabwe's chief export product. However, partly because of the country's monetary policy, an estimate of 50% of artisanal and small-scale mined gold in Zimbabwe is lost to smuggling, causing bloody turf wars that have claimed hundreds of lives.

YEREVAN - In 2018, Armenian citizens overthrew an authoritarian regime in a mass movement. Now, they are taking on an international mining company. Over the past few years, activists and locals have blockaded Lydian International’s flagship $400 million Amulsar gold mining project due to its ...

GHENT - The Polar Project is a cross-media magazine on climate change. It aims to promote interdisciplinary exchange through journalism, art, and performance, and to explore the boundaries of journalistic storytelling.

CONAKRY - A team of journalists followed the money, investigating Guineagate, a corruption case that involved a French national promoting the interests of a private company that sought a mining license at Simandou Mountains, the world’s largest known deposits of untapped iron.

LODWAR - In northern Kenya, drought caused by climate change brought also a surge in cash transfers to farmers. Millions have been invested, but locals claim they haven't received the promised financial support. The auditor general in Kenya claims billions of shillings are being lost at the ...

PRETORIA - Mining companies publicly listed in the United Kingdom must disclose the payments they make to governments, including taxes, royalties, and license fees. But this is not always the case in South Africa. A data investigation by a team of journalists and activists highlighted how these ...

MANOKWARI - This investigation examines a $22 million 'consultancy fee' paid by one of the world's largest palm oil conglomerates, the Korindo Group, to acquire of a shell company that held permits to establish an oil palm plantation in Indonesia's easternmost province of Papua.

BRUSSELS - The deep, blue oceans are home to an unprecedented wealth of biodiversity, as well as the planet's last unexploited resources. The race to the ocean floor is in full swing and Belgium is in the leading group.

BRUSSELS - There is a big illegal market for pesticides and antibiotics and these substances will still be spread, when they get banned. The industry has been able to continue the use of chlorpyrifos and expect the use to grow in the coming years, despite it has a huge and bad impact on animals and ...

BRUSSELS - Belgians are top in sorting out garbage. But what happens to the PET bottles we throw in the blue bag? Exactly how many PET bottles do we recycle? And does recycling really reduces fossil plastic production?

BRUSSELS - Climate change could leave you homeless overnight – right here, in Europe. Flash floods, mudslides and wildfires triggered by heatwaves are among the extreme weather events becoming increasingly common thanks to our changing climate.

NEW DELHI - According to the Thomson Reuters Foundation, India is the most dangerous country in the world for women. Nowhere more girls are sold as slaves. In melting Himalayan glaciers, prolonged drought, devastating storms and disappearing islands, human traffickers found new allies. Floods make ...

TBILISI - Every December, 80 million Christmas trees are sold across Europe. The majority of these, 45 million, are Nordmann firs, which originate from the Caucasus region. Eighty per cent of the Nordmann firs cultivated in Europe originate from seeds harvested in western Georgia.

LAGOS - Lured by the prospects of a better life, thousands of African youths are braving the risks of crossing the Sahara and the Mediterranean for a chance to live in Europe. Victor, a 28-year old Nigerian graduate is one of several thousands of young Nigerians who have made the dangerous journey ...