Brighter Green Nominee Marcel Gomes Is Awarded The 2024 Goldman Environmental Prize for South & Central America

Marcel and his organization, Repórter Brasil, coordinated a complex, international campaign that directly linked beef from JBS, the world’s largest meatpacking company, to illegal deforestation in Brazil’s most threatened ecosystems. Armed with detailed evidence from his breakthrough investigative report, Marcel and Repórter Brasil worked with partners to pressure global retailers to stop selling the illegally sourced meat, leading six major European supermarket chains in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom to indefinitely halt the sale of JBS products in December 2021. Watch a video of Marcel’s achievement below.

Marcel is the second Brighter Green nominee to have received the prestigious environmental prize, which has been awarded annually since 1989. In 2021, Sharon Lavigne a special education teacher turned environmental justice advocate, successfully stopped the construction of a US$1.25 billion plastics manufacturing plant alongside the Mississippi River in St. James Parish, Louisiana. Lavigne mobilized grassroots opposition to the project, educated community members, and organized peaceful protests to defend her predominantly African American community. The plant would have generated one million pounds of liquid hazardous waste annually, in a region already contending with known carcinogens and toxic air pollution. Watch a video of Sharon’s achievement below.