There’s so much wrong with this story, it’s difficult to know where to start. So let’s begin with the forests in Flanders fields – or lack thereof. After all, no other region in the EU has so little forest as Flanders.

A protest group recently planted three billboards outside Wachtebeke – inspired by the Oscar-winning film – with the message: “Since you’ve been minister, 2,000 hectares of forest have been destroyed. You promised a plan for forest conservation. What are you waiting for?”

Fair enough: they were targeting the minister for the environment, who once said that ‘a tree was always meant to be cut down’. In the highway story, it’s the minister for mobility who made it possible to start felling trees as soon as people start hiding behind them.

Refugee-hunting

Unfortunately, it seems to be hunting season on both trees and migrants. The Belgian police’s cat-and-mouse game with distressed refugees living miserably on the side of the highway as they try to reach the UK is attracting more and more coverage.

It all fits in an atmosphere fueled by Theo Francken, the Flemish nationalist secretary of state for migration and asylum, who recently said we need to “push back the boats” coming into Greece.

He also declared part of Brussels as “cleaned up” after asylum seekers sleeping on the street were rounded up and handed over to the Sudanese police to be tortured.

Francken uses language that was last used when Jews were deported from Belgium to camps in Germany, but this hasn’t prevented him from quickly becoming the most popular politician in the country.

Meanwhile, amid all the refugee-hunting, the real life stories of the people who slept in the few sleeping bags found in that little patch of forest remain untold.

Open letter

As bad as the story already is, there’s another angle. The trees’ location alongside the busy E313 motorway – which connects Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK – did not go unnoticed as people reacted to the story.

The key function of those trees was not to provide the heartbreaking setting for a dystopian game of hide-and-seek, but rather as a limited defense in absorbing some of the deadly fumes coming from the highway.

While Belgium has a long history of breaching European air quality standards, there is a recent surge in public anger about the fact that one person dies every hour just from breathing Belgium’s air.

According to one method of measurement, Belgium’s air is almost the worst of Europe, second only to Montenegro. People in Antwerp have recent launched a court case demanding drastic emergency measures to tackle toxic air.

Their campaign was launched with a passionate open letter from Jeroen Olyslaegers, the leading Belgian author, which began: “Dear concerned parents that have children with lungs”.

Grassroots movements

Now parents are protesting in front of their children’s schools, after a documentary on national TV showed just how toxic some of Belgium’s playgrounds have become.

A national newspaper is working with a university on a massive air quality project – planting 20,000 monitoring stations all across the country, and reporting on the issue in the hard hitting style of the Keep it in the Ground series from The Guardian.

I live in country where institutions rarely work together at all, but where they complement each other when it comes to destroying the natural world and increasing the suffering of fellow human beings.

But it sometimes takes one action that is testimony to utter cruelty and stupidity before the wider narrative can change – just as the full horror of the Windrush scandal is revealed in the UK – 

The silver lining to this story is that grassroots movements – such as those forming around concerned parents’ objection to their children breathing harmful air – create new and flourishing political spaces.

Pruning season

Something as crazy as cutting down trees to stop people hiding behind them provides an opportunity to ask, ‘are you serious?’ about wider regressive policies. 

Politicians ignore the anger over air pollution at their own peril. Local elections are slated for October while regional, national and European elections are in a year from now.

The reaction from the highways agency after the inevitable Twitter storm broke out only added insult to injury. They did finally issue an apology, but not because they cut the trees. The agency apologised for cutting the trees right in the pruning season.

This Author

Nick Meynen is the project officer for global policies and sustainability at the European Environmental Bureau.

There’s so much wrong with this story, it’s difficult to know where to start. So let’s begin with the forests in Flanders fields – or lack thereof. After all, no other region in the EU has so little forest as Flanders.

A protest group recently planted three billboards outside Wachtebeke – inspired by the Oscar-winning film – with the message: “Since you’ve been minister, 2,000 hectares of forest have been destroyed. You promised a plan for forest conservation. What are you waiting for?”

Fair enough: they were targeting the minister for the environment, who once said that ‘a tree was always meant to be cut down’. In the highway story, it’s the minister for mobility who made it possible to start felling trees as soon as people start hiding behind them.

Refugee-hunting

Unfortunately, it seems to be hunting season on both trees and migrants. The Belgian police’s cat-and-mouse game with distressed refugees living miserably on the side of the highway as they try to reach the UK is attracting more and more coverage.

It all fits in an atmosphere fueled by Theo Francken, the Flemish nationalist secretary of state for migration and asylum, who recently said we need to “push back the boats” coming into Greece.

He also declared part of Brussels as “cleaned up” after asylum seekers sleeping on the street were rounded up and handed over to the Sudanese police to be tortured.

Francken uses language that was last used when Jews were deported from Belgium to camps in Germany, but this hasn’t prevented him from quickly becoming the most popular politician in the country.

Meanwhile, amid all the refugee-hunting, the real life stories of the people who slept in the few sleeping bags found in that little patch of forest remain untold.

Open letter

As bad as the story already is, there’s another angle. The trees’ location alongside the busy E313 motorway – which connects Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK – did not go unnoticed as people reacted to the story.

The key function of those trees was not to provide the heartbreaking setting for a dystopian game of hide-and-seek, but rather as a limited defense in absorbing some of the deadly fumes coming from the highway.

While Belgium has a long history of breaching European air quality standards, there is a recent surge in public anger about the fact that one person dies every hour just from breathing Belgium’s air.

According to one method of measurement, Belgium’s air is almost the worst of Europe, second only to Montenegro. People in Antwerp have recent launched a court case demanding drastic emergency measures to tackle toxic air.

Their campaign was launched with a passionate open letter from Jeroen Olyslaegers, the leading Belgian author, which began: “Dear concerned parents that have children with lungs”.

Grassroots movements

Now parents are protesting in front of their children’s schools, after a documentary on national TV showed just how toxic some of Belgium’s playgrounds have become.

A national newspaper is working with a university on a massive air quality project – planting 20,000 monitoring stations all across the country, and reporting on the issue in the hard hitting style of the Keep it in the Ground series from The Guardian.

I live in country where institutions rarely work together at all, but where they complement each other when it comes to destroying the natural world and increasing the suffering of fellow human beings.

But it sometimes takes one action that is testimony to utter cruelty and stupidity before the wider narrative can change – just as the full horror of the Windrush scandal is revealed in the UK – 

The silver lining to this story is that grassroots movements – such as those forming around concerned parents’ objection to their children breathing harmful air – create new and flourishing political spaces.

Pruning season

Something as crazy as cutting down trees to stop people hiding behind them provides an opportunity to ask, ‘are you serious?’ about wider regressive policies. 

Politicians ignore the anger over air pollution at their own peril. Local elections are slated for October while regional, national and European elections are in a year from now.

The reaction from the highways agency after the inevitable Twitter storm broke out only added insult to injury. They did finally issue an apology, but not because they cut the trees. The agency apologised for cutting the trees right in the pruning season.

This Author

Nick Meynen is the project officer for global policies and sustainability at the European Environmental Bureau.

There’s so much wrong with this story, it’s difficult to know where to start. So let’s begin with the forests in Flanders fields – or lack thereof. After all, no other region in the EU has so little forest as Flanders.

A protest group recently planted three billboards outside Wachtebeke – inspired by the Oscar-winning film – with the message: “Since you’ve been minister, 2,000 hectares of forest have been destroyed. You promised a plan for forest conservation. What are you waiting for?”

Fair enough: they were targeting the minister for the environment, who once said that ‘a tree was always meant to be cut down’. In the highway story, it’s the minister for mobility who made it possible to start felling trees as soon as people start hiding behind them.

Refugee-hunting

Unfortunately, it seems to be hunting season on both trees and migrants. The Belgian police’s cat-and-mouse game with distressed refugees living miserably on the side of the highway as they try to reach the UK is attracting more and more coverage.

It all fits in an atmosphere fueled by Theo Francken, the Flemish nationalist secretary of state for migration and asylum, who recently said we need to “push back the boats” coming into Greece.

He also declared part of Brussels as “cleaned up” after asylum seekers sleeping on the street were rounded up and handed over to the Sudanese police to be tortured.

Francken uses language that was last used when Jews were deported from Belgium to camps in Germany, but this hasn’t prevented him from quickly becoming the most popular politician in the country.

Meanwhile, amid all the refugee-hunting, the real life stories of the people who slept in the few sleeping bags found in that little patch of forest remain untold.

Open letter

As bad as the story already is, there’s another angle. The trees’ location alongside the busy E313 motorway – which connects Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK – did not go unnoticed as people reacted to the story.

The key function of those trees was not to provide the heartbreaking setting for a dystopian game of hide-and-seek, but rather as a limited defense in absorbing some of the deadly fumes coming from the highway.

While Belgium has a long history of breaching European air quality standards, there is a recent surge in public anger about the fact that one person dies every hour just from breathing Belgium’s air.

According to one method of measurement, Belgium’s air is almost the worst of Europe, second only to Montenegro. People in Antwerp have recent launched a court case demanding drastic emergency measures to tackle toxic air.

Their campaign was launched with a passionate open letter from Jeroen Olyslaegers, the leading Belgian author, which began: “Dear concerned parents that have children with lungs”.

Grassroots movements

Now parents are protesting in front of their children’s schools, after a documentary on national TV showed just how toxic some of Belgium’s playgrounds have become.

A national newspaper is working with a university on a massive air quality project – planting 20,000 monitoring stations all across the country, and reporting on the issue in the hard hitting style of the Keep it in the Ground series from The Guardian.

I live in country where institutions rarely work together at all, but where they complement each other when it comes to destroying the natural world and increasing the suffering of fellow human beings.

But it sometimes takes one action that is testimony to utter cruelty and stupidity before the wider narrative can change – just as the full horror of the Windrush scandal is revealed in the UK – 

The silver lining to this story is that grassroots movements – such as those forming around concerned parents’ objection to their children breathing harmful air – create new and flourishing political spaces.

Pruning season

Something as crazy as cutting down trees to stop people hiding behind them provides an opportunity to ask, ‘are you serious?’ about wider regressive policies. 

Politicians ignore the anger over air pollution at their own peril. Local elections are slated for October while regional, national and European elections are in a year from now.

The reaction from the highways agency after the inevitable Twitter storm broke out only added insult to injury. They did finally issue an apology, but not because they cut the trees. The agency apologised for cutting the trees right in the pruning season.

This Author

Nick Meynen is the project officer for global policies and sustainability at the European Environmental Bureau.

There’s so much wrong with this story, it’s difficult to know where to start. So let’s begin with the forests in Flanders fields – or lack thereof. After all, no other region in the EU has so little forest as Flanders.

A protest group recently planted three billboards outside Wachtebeke – inspired by the Oscar-winning film – with the message: “Since you’ve been minister, 2,000 hectares of forest have been destroyed. You promised a plan for forest conservation. What are you waiting for?”

Fair enough: they were targeting the minister for the environment, who once said that ‘a tree was always meant to be cut down’. In the highway story, it’s the minister for mobility who made it possible to start felling trees as soon as people start hiding behind them.

Refugee-hunting

Unfortunately, it seems to be hunting season on both trees and migrants. The Belgian police’s cat-and-mouse game with distressed refugees living miserably on the side of the highway as they try to reach the UK is attracting more and more coverage.

It all fits in an atmosphere fueled by Theo Francken, the Flemish nationalist secretary of state for migration and asylum, who recently said we need to “push back the boats” coming into Greece.

He also declared part of Brussels as “cleaned up” after asylum seekers sleeping on the street were rounded up and handed over to the Sudanese police to be tortured.

Francken uses language that was last used when Jews were deported from Belgium to camps in Germany, but this hasn’t prevented him from quickly becoming the most popular politician in the country.

Meanwhile, amid all the refugee-hunting, the real life stories of the people who slept in the few sleeping bags found in that little patch of forest remain untold.

Open letter

As bad as the story already is, there’s another angle. The trees’ location alongside the busy E313 motorway – which connects Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK – did not go unnoticed as people reacted to the story.

The key function of those trees was not to provide the heartbreaking setting for a dystopian game of hide-and-seek, but rather as a limited defense in absorbing some of the deadly fumes coming from the highway.

While Belgium has a long history of breaching European air quality standards, there is a recent surge in public anger about the fact that one person dies every hour just from breathing Belgium’s air.

According to one method of measurement, Belgium’s air is almost the worst of Europe, second only to Montenegro. People in Antwerp have recent launched a court case demanding drastic emergency measures to tackle toxic air.

Their campaign was launched with a passionate open letter from Jeroen Olyslaegers, the leading Belgian author, which began: “Dear concerned parents that have children with lungs”.

Grassroots movements

Now parents are protesting in front of their children’s schools, after a documentary on national TV showed just how toxic some of Belgium’s playgrounds have become.

A national newspaper is working with a university on a massive air quality project – planting 20,000 monitoring stations all across the country, and reporting on the issue in the hard hitting style of the Keep it in the Ground series from The Guardian.

I live in country where institutions rarely work together at all, but where they complement each other when it comes to destroying the natural world and increasing the suffering of fellow human beings.

But it sometimes takes one action that is testimony to utter cruelty and stupidity before the wider narrative can change – just as the full horror of the Windrush scandal is revealed in the UK – 

The silver lining to this story is that grassroots movements – such as those forming around concerned parents’ objection to their children breathing harmful air – create new and flourishing political spaces.

Pruning season

Something as crazy as cutting down trees to stop people hiding behind them provides an opportunity to ask, ‘are you serious?’ about wider regressive policies. 

Politicians ignore the anger over air pollution at their own peril. Local elections are slated for October while regional, national and European elections are in a year from now.

The reaction from the highways agency after the inevitable Twitter storm broke out only added insult to injury. They did finally issue an apology, but not because they cut the trees. The agency apologised for cutting the trees right in the pruning season.

This Author

Nick Meynen is the project officer for global policies and sustainability at the European Environmental Bureau.

There’s so much wrong with this story, it’s difficult to know where to start. So let’s begin with the forests in Flanders fields – or lack thereof. After all, no other region in the EU has so little forest as Flanders.

A protest group recently planted three billboards outside Wachtebeke – inspired by the Oscar-winning film – with the message: “Since you’ve been minister, 2,000 hectares of forest have been destroyed. You promised a plan for forest conservation. What are you waiting for?”

Fair enough: they were targeting the minister for the environment, who once said that ‘a tree was always meant to be cut down’. In the highway story, it’s the minister for mobility who made it possible to start felling trees as soon as people start hiding behind them.

Refugee-hunting

Unfortunately, it seems to be hunting season on both trees and migrants. The Belgian police’s cat-and-mouse game with distressed refugees living miserably on the side of the highway as they try to reach the UK is attracting more and more coverage.

It all fits in an atmosphere fueled by Theo Francken, the Flemish nationalist secretary of state for migration and asylum, who recently said we need to “push back the boats” coming into Greece.

He also declared part of Brussels as “cleaned up” after asylum seekers sleeping on the street were rounded up and handed over to the Sudanese police to be tortured.

Francken uses language that was last used when Jews were deported from Belgium to camps in Germany, but this hasn’t prevented him from quickly becoming the most popular politician in the country.

Meanwhile, amid all the refugee-hunting, the real life stories of the people who slept in the few sleeping bags found in that little patch of forest remain untold.

Open letter

As bad as the story already is, there’s another angle. The trees’ location alongside the busy E313 motorway – which connects Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK – did not go unnoticed as people reacted to the story.

The key function of those trees was not to provide the heartbreaking setting for a dystopian game of hide-and-seek, but rather as a limited defense in absorbing some of the deadly fumes coming from the highway.

While Belgium has a long history of breaching European air quality standards, there is a recent surge in public anger about the fact that one person dies every hour just from breathing Belgium’s air.

According to one method of measurement, Belgium’s air is almost the worst of Europe, second only to Montenegro. People in Antwerp have recent launched a court case demanding drastic emergency measures to tackle toxic air.

Their campaign was launched with a passionate open letter from Jeroen Olyslaegers, the leading Belgian author, which began: “Dear concerned parents that have children with lungs”.

Grassroots movements

Now parents are protesting in front of their children’s schools, after a documentary on national TV showed just how toxic some of Belgium’s playgrounds have become.

A national newspaper is working with a university on a massive air quality project – planting 20,000 monitoring stations all across the country, and reporting on the issue in the hard hitting style of the Keep it in the Ground series from The Guardian.

I live in country where institutions rarely work together at all, but where they complement each other when it comes to destroying the natural world and increasing the suffering of fellow human beings.

But it sometimes takes one action that is testimony to utter cruelty and stupidity before the wider narrative can change – just as the full horror of the Windrush scandal is revealed in the UK – 

The silver lining to this story is that grassroots movements – such as those forming around concerned parents’ objection to their children breathing harmful air – create new and flourishing political spaces.

Pruning season

Something as crazy as cutting down trees to stop people hiding behind them provides an opportunity to ask, ‘are you serious?’ about wider regressive policies. 

Politicians ignore the anger over air pollution at their own peril. Local elections are slated for October while regional, national and European elections are in a year from now.

The reaction from the highways agency after the inevitable Twitter storm broke out only added insult to injury. They did finally issue an apology, but not because they cut the trees. The agency apologised for cutting the trees right in the pruning season.

This Author

Nick Meynen is the project officer for global policies and sustainability at the European Environmental Bureau.

There’s so much wrong with this story, it’s difficult to know where to start. So let’s begin with the forests in Flanders fields – or lack thereof. After all, no other region in the EU has so little forest as Flanders.

A protest group recently planted three billboards outside Wachtebeke – inspired by the Oscar-winning film – with the message: “Since you’ve been minister, 2,000 hectares of forest have been destroyed. You promised a plan for forest conservation. What are you waiting for?”

Fair enough: they were targeting the minister for the environment, who once said that ‘a tree was always meant to be cut down’. In the highway story, it’s the minister for mobility who made it possible to start felling trees as soon as people start hiding behind them.

Refugee-hunting

Unfortunately, it seems to be hunting season on both trees and migrants. The Belgian police’s cat-and-mouse game with distressed refugees living miserably on the side of the highway as they try to reach the UK is attracting more and more coverage.

It all fits in an atmosphere fueled by Theo Francken, the Flemish nationalist secretary of state for migration and asylum, who recently said we need to “push back the boats” coming into Greece.

He also declared part of Brussels as “cleaned up” after asylum seekers sleeping on the street were rounded up and handed over to the Sudanese police to be tortured.

Francken uses language that was last used when Jews were deported from Belgium to camps in Germany, but this hasn’t prevented him from quickly becoming the most popular politician in the country.

Meanwhile, amid all the refugee-hunting, the real life stories of the people who slept in the few sleeping bags found in that little patch of forest remain untold.

Open letter

As bad as the story already is, there’s another angle. The trees’ location alongside the busy E313 motorway – which connects Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK – did not go unnoticed as people reacted to the story.

The key function of those trees was not to provide the heartbreaking setting for a dystopian game of hide-and-seek, but rather as a limited defense in absorbing some of the deadly fumes coming from the highway.

While Belgium has a long history of breaching European air quality standards, there is a recent surge in public anger about the fact that one person dies every hour just from breathing Belgium’s air.

According to one method of measurement, Belgium’s air is almost the worst of Europe, second only to Montenegro. People in Antwerp have recent launched a court case demanding drastic emergency measures to tackle toxic air.

Their campaign was launched with a passionate open letter from Jeroen Olyslaegers, the leading Belgian author, which began: “Dear concerned parents that have children with lungs”.

Grassroots movements

Now parents are protesting in front of their children’s schools, after a documentary on national TV showed just how toxic some of Belgium’s playgrounds have become.

A national newspaper is working with a university on a massive air quality project – planting 20,000 monitoring stations all across the country, and reporting on the issue in the hard hitting style of the Keep it in the Ground series from The Guardian.

I live in country where institutions rarely work together at all, but where they complement each other when it comes to destroying the natural world and increasing the suffering of fellow human beings.

But it sometimes takes one action that is testimony to utter cruelty and stupidity before the wider narrative can change – just as the full horror of the Windrush scandal is revealed in the UK – 

The silver lining to this story is that grassroots movements – such as those forming around concerned parents’ objection to their children breathing harmful air – create new and flourishing political spaces.

Pruning season

Something as crazy as cutting down trees to stop people hiding behind them provides an opportunity to ask, ‘are you serious?’ about wider regressive policies. 

Politicians ignore the anger over air pollution at their own peril. Local elections are slated for October while regional, national and European elections are in a year from now.

The reaction from the highways agency after the inevitable Twitter storm broke out only added insult to injury. They did finally issue an apology, but not because they cut the trees. The agency apologised for cutting the trees right in the pruning season.

This Author

Nick Meynen is the project officer for global policies and sustainability at the European Environmental Bureau.

There’s so much wrong with this story, it’s difficult to know where to start. So let’s begin with the forests in Flanders fields – or lack thereof. After all, no other region in the EU has so little forest as Flanders.

A protest group recently planted three billboards outside Wachtebeke – inspired by the Oscar-winning film – with the message: “Since you’ve been minister, 2,000 hectares of forest have been destroyed. You promised a plan for forest conservation. What are you waiting for?”

Fair enough: they were targeting the minister for the environment, who once said that ‘a tree was always meant to be cut down’. In the highway story, it’s the minister for mobility who made it possible to start felling trees as soon as people start hiding behind them.

Refugee-hunting

Unfortunately, it seems to be hunting season on both trees and migrants. The Belgian police’s cat-and-mouse game with distressed refugees living miserably on the side of the highway as they try to reach the UK is attracting more and more coverage.

It all fits in an atmosphere fueled by Theo Francken, the Flemish nationalist secretary of state for migration and asylum, who recently said we need to “push back the boats” coming into Greece.

He also declared part of Brussels as “cleaned up” after asylum seekers sleeping on the street were rounded up and handed over to the Sudanese police to be tortured.

Francken uses language that was last used when Jews were deported from Belgium to camps in Germany, but this hasn’t prevented him from quickly becoming the most popular politician in the country.

Meanwhile, amid all the refugee-hunting, the real life stories of the people who slept in the few sleeping bags found in that little patch of forest remain untold.

Open letter

As bad as the story already is, there’s another angle. The trees’ location alongside the busy E313 motorway – which connects Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK – did not go unnoticed as people reacted to the story.

The key function of those trees was not to provide the heartbreaking setting for a dystopian game of hide-and-seek, but rather as a limited defense in absorbing some of the deadly fumes coming from the highway.

While Belgium has a long history of breaching European air quality standards, there is a recent surge in public anger about the fact that one person dies every hour just from breathing Belgium’s air.

According to one method of measurement, Belgium’s air is almost the worst of Europe, second only to Montenegro. People in Antwerp have recent launched a court case demanding drastic emergency measures to tackle toxic air.

Their campaign was launched with a passionate open letter from Jeroen Olyslaegers, the leading Belgian author, which began: “Dear concerned parents that have children with lungs”.

Grassroots movements

Now parents are protesting in front of their children’s schools, after a documentary on national TV showed just how toxic some of Belgium’s playgrounds have become.

A national newspaper is working with a university on a massive air quality project – planting 20,000 monitoring stations all across the country, and reporting on the issue in the hard hitting style of the Keep it in the Ground series from The Guardian.

I live in country where institutions rarely work together at all, but where they complement each other when it comes to destroying the natural world and increasing the suffering of fellow human beings.

But it sometimes takes one action that is testimony to utter cruelty and stupidity before the wider narrative can change – just as the full horror of the Windrush scandal is revealed in the UK – 

The silver lining to this story is that grassroots movements – such as those forming around concerned parents’ objection to their children breathing harmful air – create new and flourishing political spaces.

Pruning season

Something as crazy as cutting down trees to stop people hiding behind them provides an opportunity to ask, ‘are you serious?’ about wider regressive policies. 

Politicians ignore the anger over air pollution at their own peril. Local elections are slated for October while regional, national and European elections are in a year from now.

The reaction from the highways agency after the inevitable Twitter storm broke out only added insult to injury. They did finally issue an apology, but not because they cut the trees. The agency apologised for cutting the trees right in the pruning season.

This Author

Nick Meynen is the project officer for global policies and sustainability at the European Environmental Bureau.

There’s so much wrong with this story, it’s difficult to know where to start. So let’s begin with the forests in Flanders fields – or lack thereof. After all, no other region in the EU has so little forest as Flanders.

A protest group recently planted three billboards outside Wachtebeke – inspired by the Oscar-winning film – with the message: “Since you’ve been minister, 2,000 hectares of forest have been destroyed. You promised a plan for forest conservation. What are you waiting for?”

Fair enough: they were targeting the minister for the environment, who once said that ‘a tree was always meant to be cut down’. In the highway story, it’s the minister for mobility who made it possible to start felling trees as soon as people start hiding behind them.

Refugee-hunting

Unfortunately, it seems to be hunting season on both trees and migrants. The Belgian police’s cat-and-mouse game with distressed refugees living miserably on the side of the highway as they try to reach the UK is attracting more and more coverage.

It all fits in an atmosphere fueled by Theo Francken, the Flemish nationalist secretary of state for migration and asylum, who recently said we need to “push back the boats” coming into Greece.

He also declared part of Brussels as “cleaned up” after asylum seekers sleeping on the street were rounded up and handed over to the Sudanese police to be tortured.

Francken uses language that was last used when Jews were deported from Belgium to camps in Germany, but this hasn’t prevented him from quickly becoming the most popular politician in the country.

Meanwhile, amid all the refugee-hunting, the real life stories of the people who slept in the few sleeping bags found in that little patch of forest remain untold.

Open letter

As bad as the story already is, there’s another angle. The trees’ location alongside the busy E313 motorway – which connects Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK – did not go unnoticed as people reacted to the story.

The key function of those trees was not to provide the heartbreaking setting for a dystopian game of hide-and-seek, but rather as a limited defense in absorbing some of the deadly fumes coming from the highway.

While Belgium has a long history of breaching European air quality standards, there is a recent surge in public anger about the fact that one person dies every hour just from breathing Belgium’s air.

According to one method of measurement, Belgium’s air is almost the worst of Europe, second only to Montenegro. People in Antwerp have recent launched a court case demanding drastic emergency measures to tackle toxic air.

Their campaign was launched with a passionate open letter from Jeroen Olyslaegers, the leading Belgian author, which began: “Dear concerned parents that have children with lungs”.

Grassroots movements

Now parents are protesting in front of their children’s schools, after a documentary on national TV showed just how toxic some of Belgium’s playgrounds have become.

A national newspaper is working with a university on a massive air quality project – planting 20,000 monitoring stations all across the country, and reporting on the issue in the hard hitting style of the Keep it in the Ground series from The Guardian.

I live in country where institutions rarely work together at all, but where they complement each other when it comes to destroying the natural world and increasing the suffering of fellow human beings.

But it sometimes takes one action that is testimony to utter cruelty and stupidity before the wider narrative can change – just as the full horror of the Windrush scandal is revealed in the UK – 

The silver lining to this story is that grassroots movements – such as those forming around concerned parents’ objection to their children breathing harmful air – create new and flourishing political spaces.

Pruning season

Something as crazy as cutting down trees to stop people hiding behind them provides an opportunity to ask, ‘are you serious?’ about wider regressive policies. 

Politicians ignore the anger over air pollution at their own peril. Local elections are slated for October while regional, national and European elections are in a year from now.

The reaction from the highways agency after the inevitable Twitter storm broke out only added insult to injury. They did finally issue an apology, but not because they cut the trees. The agency apologised for cutting the trees right in the pruning season.

This Author

Nick Meynen is the project officer for global policies and sustainability at the European Environmental Bureau.

A new film by director MJ Delaney explores the struggles still faced by the people who make our clothes – five years following the Rana Plaza tragedy in Bangladesh in which more than a thousand people perished after the building housing several garment factories collapsed.

The film has been released to coincide with Fashion Revolution Week and fuses the stories of the invisible people who make our clothes around the world with mixed dance inspired by different cultures to raise awareness of the complex nature of the fashion industry.

Openness and dialogue

Its potent message demands a fair, safe and more transparent industry, and gives the viewer agency by showing how they can start a fashion revolution by asking brands one question: #whomademyclothes?

The campaign film aims to connect a young, global, fashion-loving audience to the people that make up the fashion supply chain. It seeks to inspire viewers to do something about it through downloading resources, online tools and workshops to take action writing to their favourite brands.

Orsola de Castro, founder and creative director of Fashion Revolution, said: “Fashion Revolution is a positive, inclusive, pro-fashion campaign. We focus on solutions while shining a light on the complexities and the inequalities of the fashion supply chain, without naming and shaming brands but encouraging transparency, openness and dialogue.

We ask our audience to be curious, find out, and do something, encouraging scrutiny and vigilance via enthusiasm as opposed to guilt.”

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Catherine Harte is a contributing editor of The Ecologist.

Chris Packham, the BBC naturalist, visited Sheffield on Earth Day in the company of top urban tree consultants, Philip van Wassenaer from Canada and Jeremy Barrell, from Hampshire, to learn more about the situation and to offer support to campaigners. 

Read Paul Miles’ original feature about the Sheffield tree fiasco..

Van Wassenaer said during his visit: “After looking at dozens of trees scheduled to be felled in many locations, I didn’t see one that had a good arboricultural reason for removal. In Canada, the goal of Urban Forestry is to have large stature, full-canopied trees. Sheffield has just those trees but is now cutting them down. It’s hard to fathom!”

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Barrell travels extensively to international seminars to speak about arboriculture and heritage trees. He estimates that most of the mature street trees in Sheffield still have a potential “seventy to ninety” years of providing shade, reducing flood risk, minimising pollution and providing habitat for insects, birds and mammals.

Tree defenders

“When trees are mature, they’ve just started to deliver these benefits. Saplings take 40 years to reach such a stage. No one should be under any illusion, this is the worst industrial scale felling of good quality urban trees that I have ever seen anywhere in the world,” said Barrell.

Councillors in Sheffield may lose the support of a tranche of the electorate at local council elections next week because of the ongoing felling of thousands of healthy mature street trees. The “chainsaw massacre” – and the way in which the council, its PFI contractor Amey, their private security force and South Yorkshire Police are treating protesters – has so incensed residents that some are no longer planning to vote for the current council leadership.

Sheffield City Council apparently sees no irony in holding an internet consultation with residents on how to make Sheffield a greener city. The consultation, titled ‘Green City Strategy – For a low carbon, resilient and sustainable Sheffield’ closes on 29th May.

The council press office is also currently promoting a video produced by Amey that quotes an anonymous resident as saying “the protesters have no respect for democracy”. In the Amey video, a handful of residents voice their support for the tree felling, saying that tree roots are causing pavements to become hazardous and that homes are being damaged. The same residents claim that the actions of tree defenders are intimidating.

Jennifer Saul, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield, gives another viewpoint. She says that the pro-felling residents were aggressive towards the tree defenders and that there had been no official report to say that cellar damage was caused by the tree. 

Temporary barriers

While Amey and the Council can rustle up a handful of people who agree with the felling, hundreds of those who disagree with the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) contract – which states that up to 17,500 of the city’s 35,000 street trees could be destined for the chop – have marched through the city centre to make their feelings known.

One peaceful demonstration features on a video made in response to the multinational’s propaganda. “Sheffield City Council and Amey have no respect for democracy”, counters this video – which shows the apparently heavy-handed tactics used by police and Amey’s security staff against protesters, many of whom are elderly.

The Council’s rationale is that it is worth cutting down a proportion of the city’s trees if it means a significant improvement in infrastructure and resultant investment from new business. The council’s public relations team points out perceived improvements to Sheffield’s roads since Amey began its contract, as judged by respondents to last year’s survey by the National Highways & Transport Network.

However, such claims are put in doubt by the council’s own 2017/2018 budget consultation which shows that while ‘transport and highways’ ranks third in priority for spending after social care and education, the majority of respondents think that the state of transport and highways has ‘got worse’.

The Sheffield Tree Action Groups Facebook page has examples of roads that have recently been resurfaced by Amey but are already potholed and of temporary barriers left around tree stumps for weeks, obstructing pavements.

Shel Irenesdottir, a Sheffield resident, wheelchair user and vociferous tree defender, blames the uneven pavements on a lack of maintenance by Amey and “not the trees.” Another English council – Gloucestershire – has labelled Amey as “hopeless” and is not renewing its contract with them for highways maintenance.

The story of Sheffield’s tree felling controversy has now appeared in all major UK newspapers, on TV news channels and in the New York Times and Spain’s El Mundo. An international support group for the tree defenders has been established – @STIC17500 – on Twitter and an increasing number of experts and celebrities from around the world are speaking out.

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Paul Miles is a regular contributor to The Ecologist.