CATAPA

Founded in 2003, CATAPA is a non-profit association based in Ghent, Belgium working on environment & climate, human rights, water & sanitation +2 more.

CATAPA is a Belgian non-profit association (vzw) based in Ghent, Flanders, that works against the harms of large-scale mining and extractivism. It was founded in 2003 as BelBol, became an official association in 2005 and a non-profit organisation in 2008. CATAPA combines awareness raising, research, lobbying and campaigns in Flanders and Europe with support for local communities affected by mining in Latin America, mainly Bolivia, Peru, Colombia and Ecuador. It works through partner organisations, funding and supporting community water projects such as solar distillation and rainwater harvesting, and campaigns on mining cases in Peru, Bolivia, Greece, Romania and Spain. Its thematic focus has widened to ICT hardware and the human rights and environmental impacts of metal supply chains, through campaigns such as Ctrl Alt Delete and projects like Make ICT Fair and NEMO. The organisation is run largely by volunteers, with working groups covering North and South work, and it promotes degrowth and a shift away from non-renewable resource extraction.