
Articles by Karla Mendes
Karla Mendes is an award-winning Brazilian journalist working as a Rio de
Janeiro-based Contributor Editor for Mongabay. She has been working as a correspondent for international outlets since 2015 and she specialised in covering environmental, land and property rights issues since 2017. She worked as a land and property rights correspondent for the Thomson Reuters Foundation between August 2017 and December 2018. Prior to that, Karla was a business reporter for over 10 years in Rio, Madrid, Brasilia and Belo Horizonte, including with newspapers O Globo, O Estado de S. Paulo, Expansión and news agency S&P Global Market Intelligence. Karla has a Master in Investigative and Data Journalism from the University of King’s College, Canada, and an MBA in finance from São Paulo’s Fundação Instituto de Administração (FIA). She is fluent in English, Spanish and Portuguese.
Image by Fábio Nascimento


Brazilian Amazon fires scientifically linked to 2019 deforestation: report

Germany cuts $39.5 million in environmental funding to Brazil

Future of Amazon deforestation data in doubt as research head sacked

New film reveals at-risk ‘uncontacted’ Awá tribe in Brazilian Amazon

Deforestation drops in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, but risks remain: experts

Experts deny alleged manipulation of Amazon satellite deforestation data

Brazil’s Congress reverses Bolsonaro, restores Funai’s land demarcation powers

‘Resisting to exist’: Indigenous women unite against Brazil’s far-right president

China, EU, US trading with Brazilian firms fined for Amazon deforestation: report

Brazil Supreme Court land demarcation decision sparks indigenous protest
Special series
Forest trackers
- Indigenous Cacataibo of Peru threatened by land grabbing and drug trade
- Colombian and Ecuadorian Indigenous communities live in fear as drug traffickers invade
- Cocaine production driving deforestation into Colombian national park
- Industrial agriculture threatens a wetland oasis in Bolivia

Oceans
- 2020’s top ocean news stories (commentary)
- ‘Tamper with nature, and everyone suffers’: Q&A with ecologist Enric Sala
- New paper highlights spread of organized crime from global fisheries
- Study: Chinese ‘dark fleets’ illegally defying sanctions by fishing in North Korean waters

Amazon conservation
- Lack of protection leaves Spain-size swath of Brazilian Amazon up for grabs
- Soy moratorium averted New Jersey-size loss of Amazon rainforest: Study
- Brazilian woman threatened by Amazon loggers wins global human rights award
- Tropical forests can take the heat, study finds. Dryness? Not so much

Land rights and extractives
- Podcast: New innovations to clean up the impacts of mining
- Environmentalists seek to block Bahamas oil drilling bid near U.S. coast
- Podcast: Indigenous land rights and the global push for land privatization
- Multiplying Amazon river ports open new Brazil-to-China commodities routes

Endangered environmentalists
- Brazilian woman threatened by Amazon loggers wins global human rights award
- Indonesian fishers opposed to dredging project hit by ‘criminalization’ bid
- Life as an Amazon activist: ‘I don’t want to be the next Dorothy Stang’
- In Philippines’ Palawan, top cop linked to assault on environmental officer

Indonesias forest guardians
- Why I stand for my tribe’s forest: It gives us food, culture, and life (commentary)
- Reforesting a village in Indonesia, one batch of gourmet beans at a time
- Restoring Sumatra’s Leuser Ecosystem, one small farm at a time
- Indigenous Iban community defends rainforests, but awaits lands rights recognition
