Environment Shortlist

Albania is one of the poorest European countries, with a per capita income of US$4,500. Yet it has a subsoil that is rich in crude oil, with more than 5.3 billion barrels lying beneath the surface. During the communist dictatorship of Enver Hoxha, the country was isolated, leaving it open only to Soviet and Chinese influences. These relationships led to the development of the technological capabilities necessary to begin tapping into Albania’s oil wells, but since the fall of the regime, free market capitalism has taken hold. Now, various corporations, including Bankers Petroleum, a Canadian company recently acquired by China’s Geo-Jade Petroleum, own 95 percent of crude oil extraction in the Patos-Marzina region. This seismic shift in the market has caused significant social and environmental issues, including contaminated lakes, oil leaks, abandoned structures, the poisoning of underground water wells and emissions that affect the surrounding villages.

Jonas Kakó studies photojournalism and documentary photography at the University of Hannover. For several years he has been dealing with the effects of the climate crisis in his photographic work. For him, the pressing issue of our time, he focuses on individual fates of people who are already suffering from the consequences of global warming and are threatened in their existence.
His freelance work has appeared in National Geographic, Stern, Vice, de Volkskrant and the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, among othe