Fetisov Journalism Awards 2021

Category: Excellence in Environmental Journalism

Third Prize

Title: "Brazil prosecutors cite Mongabay probe in new legal battle against palm oil firms"

Author: Karla Mendes (Brazil)

Karla Mendes is an award-winning environmental Brazilian journalist working as a Contributing Editor for Mongabay.

In 2020, she won the SEJ's top award in the outstanding explanatory reporting category for a project published by the Thomson Reuters Foundation about Maranhão's Guardians of the Forest. The documentary film was also awarded by the Colorado Environmental Film Festival and the Naples Human Rights Film Festival.

In 2021, a documentary she directed about Indigenous people in Brazilian cities received the Jackson Wild award; she also won the Geneton Moraes Neto Journalism Award with an article about farmers paid to “produce water” published by the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

This year, she won the Fetisov Journalism Award with an investigation about “sustainable” palm oil triggering deforestation and water contamination in Brazil’s Amazon, published by Mongabay.

As a business reporter, she won three top journalism awards with a series about “Pirates in the Amazon,” published in O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper.

Déjà Vu as Palm Oil Industry Brings Deforestation, Pollution to Amazon

The original publication is available via the following link: https://news.mongabay.com/2021/03/deja-vu-as-palm-oil-industry-brings-deforestation-pollution-to-amazon/

12 March 2021

Mongabay Series: Amazon Agribusiness, Amazon Illegal Deforestation, Global Palm Oil

Producers say their supply chains are green and sustainable, but prosecutors cite a long record of land grabbing, deforestation, pollution, and human rights violations

Palm oil, a crop synonymous with deforestation and community conflicts in Southeast Asia, is making inroads in the Brazilian Amazon, where the same issues are playing out.
Indigenous and traditional communities say the plantations in their midst are polluting their water, poisoning their soil, and driving away fish and game.
Scientists have found high levels of agrochemical residues in these communities — though still within Brazil’s legal limits — while prosecutors are pursuing legal cases against the companies for allegedly violating Indigenous and traditional communities’ rights and damaging the environment.
Studies based on satellite imagery also disprove the companies’ claims that they only plant on already deforested land.

TOMÉ-AÇU, Brazil — Guided by an Indigenous leader, we drove down dusty roads in the Turé-Mariquita Indigenous Reserve, a “green island” encircled by oil palm plantations in the Brazilian Amazon.

Uniform rows of oil palms cover huge swaths of land here in the northeast of the state of Pará, once home to a vibrant expanse of rainforest. Our Mongabay reporting team was there to discover if the palm oil business, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, is sustainable and ecologically responsible, as industry representatives told us.

Brazil prosecutors cite Mongabay probe in new legal battle against palm oil firms

Mongabay - 26 March 2021

Prosecutors in Brazil say they will use findings from an investigation by Mongabay as evidence to hold a palm oil company accountable for water contamination in an Indigenous reserve in the Amazon.
The move comes as prosecutors filed an appeal March 26 against a ruling blocking a forensic investigation into water contamination from pesticide use by Biopalma that has impacted the Tembé people of the Turé-Mariquita Indigenous Reserve in Pará state.
Mongabay’s 18-month investigation, published March 12, revealed evidence of this pollution as well as similar cases involving two other top Brazilian palm oil companies, pointing to a potentially industry-wide pattern of disregard for Amazon conservation and for the rights of Indigenous people and traditional communities.
The investigation also revealed the clearing of native forests for oil palm cultivation, as shown through satellite imagery, contradicting claims by the companies and the government that oil palm crops are planted only on already deforested land.

Federal prosecutors in Brazil have cited a recent Mongabay investigation into water contamination by a palm oil company in an Indigenous reserve as key evidence in their legal battle to hold the company accountable.