Dr M.V. Isaias Mendes (Vinícius)

I am a political scientist, focusing on the critical political economy of the environment. The common thread in my research projects is the attempt to understand how asymmetric power relations and injustice operate in the global capitalist system, affecting marginalised peoples and communities while contributing to the ongoing planetary crisis, in particular climate change and biodiversity loss through agro-extractivism, commodity trade, and non-sustainable development models. My teaching and research contribute to debates on intersectional environmental justice, social-ecological transformations, and bottom-up approaches to governing sustainability transitions. I am interested in action-research and transdisciplinary forms of knowledge-production, collaborating with academics, environmental NGOs and local communities across Europe and Latin America. The goal is broadly to co-develop just and equitable forms of sustainability transformations, empowering women, peasants, Afrodescendants, agroecology farmers, Indigenous peoples and local communities in resistance projects to protect forests (esp. the Amazon), rivers, land and biodiversity.

Empirically, I’ve been carrying out fieldwork at the local level (cities and climate change), sectorial studies connected to climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution (information technology, agricultural, energy and trade sectors), with geographical scope in Europe (Germany, Netherlands) and Latin America (Brazilian Amazon). Since 2023 I have been working on the Horizon Europe project PLANET4B (2023-2025), investigating how the production and trade of soy and beef between Brazil and EU/Netherlands affect biodiversity, Indigenous peoples and local communities, threatening the Brazilian Amazon. And the role of European institutions and policies, such as the EU Regulation on Deforestation-free Products (EUDR), to reduce the EU global deforestation footprint.