On my journey I was lucky enough to receive help and inspiration from a large number of people. While I can never do justice to all of them, I want to thank some personally.
When Leida Rijnhout hired me in 2008 and placed me in an international project with Professor Joan Martinez Alier, it felt like finding my mission at the age of 28. I see them as my mentors, a Godmother and Godfather. I’m grateful that they’ve been supporting me throughout my learning curve.
Since joining the European Environmental Bureau (EEB) in 2014 I have also greatly benefited from the specialist knowledge of many expert colleagues on various environmental matters. I especially thank Jeremy Wates for seeing value in the difficult systemic change debates that I stirred from time to time within the EEB, and for allowing me to create a new position: policy officer on environmental and economic justice.
But here’s a disclaimer: nothing in this book is the opinion of the EEB or its millions of members all over Europe. This book is neither written during my working time nor financed by the EEB and it should in no way be considered as an EEB product.
I like to thank writers, journalists and mentors Gie Goris and Isabelle Rossaert for opening their homes for inspiring retreats. Excellent feedback on draft manuscripts was given by Marjan Cauwenberg, Wietse Vermeulen, Johan Denis and Hans Devroe. For the nitty gritty of spelling, grammar and source checks, Mercedes De Grande, Jan Drieghe and Inge Verbeeck offered me a great service.
And then there are the many people who helped me during fieldwork. For the chapter on Greek gold alone, I wish to thank Stavroula Poulimeni, Maria Kadoglou and Charlotte Christiaens: they were indispensable. My toxic tours in Italy and Bulgaria were only possible thanks to Lucie Greyl and Evgenia Tasheva, while I have Steven Spittaels to thank for giving me the opportunity to map the war in Eastern Congo.
A big thanks to all the people I had multiple or longer interviews with, in particular to Bruno Chareyron, Georgi Kotev, Katrien Van der Biest, Sumaira Abdulali, Julio Prieto, Steven Donziger, Alexandru Popescu, Nic Balthazar, Roger Cox, Jan van de Venis, Filip De Bodt, David Dene, Tom Troonbeeckx and Patrizia Heidegger.
The chapter “The trade in hot air” would not exist without the financial support of the Pascal Decroos Fund for investigative journalism: a fund that gives journalists the chance to dig much deeper than usual. The chapter “Sustainable destruction” was only possible with the help from the organization Medicine for the People and their dedicated staff in Hoboken. I’m very grateful for the funding for translation received from the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology - Autonomous University Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), Project: EnvJustice, European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant 2016-21. However, I’m the sole responsible person for the content. Neither ICTA-UAB nor the ERC can be held accountable for the contents of this work.
Both the former and the current publishers at EPO deserve great credit for not just accepting my original book but for their intense guidance towards the finished product in Dutch. In the journey from the Dutch original to this book I’ve had great support from English native speaking colleagues Anton Lazarus and Anita Willcox, who often polished a pitch or synopsis in exchange for as little as a homemade rhubarb pie. Of a different category was the year-long support from Jack Hunter, who reviewed the whole manuscript line by line, after my rough translation. But that was worth every penny Jack, as you also translated my wordplay, humor and nuances to do justice to my writing style in Dutch.
“I just need to finish this sentence” is a line I can no longer utter at home, after years of stretching the limits of buying time to work on my book. Fany Crevecoeur and Flora Meynen-Crevecoeur deserve apologies, compensation and a very big thank you for all those days and evenings that they tolerated me being home but not really being with them. I want to thank them for the understanding, patience and for the moral support. Our youngest family member, Rosalie Meynen-Crevecoeur, was too young for all of that. But I also took dad-time away from here to write this book. I’ve often had her in mind when writing this book, as she has a life expectancy that stretches into the twenty-second century. If she makes it to that century, what will she see in the review mirror? Will she feel just as thankful as I feel towards all those heroes that feature in this book?