--- title: Mariangela Hungria: The 100 Most Influential Climate Leaders of 2025 description: Find out why Mariangela Hungria is on TIME's 2025 list of the 100 most influential leaders driving business climate action. canonical: https://time.com/collections/time-100-climate-2025/7326604/mariangela-hungria/ article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2025-10-30T11:30:16.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-03T01:01:47.871Z article:section: Climate og:title: Mariangela Hungria: The 100 Most Influential Climate Leaders of 2025 og:description: Find out why Mariangela Hungria is on TIME's 2025 list of the 100 most influential leaders driving business climate action. og:url: https://time.com/collections/time-100-climate-2025/7326604/mariangela-hungria/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltae7ad69d55f21e1d/6998caf725f3ee40566451e3/Defenders-Mariangela-Hungria.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Mariangela Hungria: The 100 Most Influential Climate Leaders of 2025 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Mariangela Hungria: The 100 Most Influential Climate Leaders of 2025 twitter:description: Find out why Mariangela Hungria is on TIME's 2025 list of the 100 most influential leaders driving business climate action. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltae7ad69d55f21e1d/6998caf725f3ee40566451e3/Defenders-Mariangela-Hungria.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Oct 30, 2025 # Mariangela Hungria Senior Researcher, Embrapa Brazil by Mariangela Hungria  Photo-Illustration by TIME (Courtesy Photo) _Mariangela Hungria, a 2025 World Food Prize-winning Brazilian agronomist and microbiologist, has helped Brazil’s Embrapa (Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation) develop innovative soil microbes that enable crops like legumes to pull nitrogen from the air and reduce the need for harmful, costly chemical fertilizers. Her innovations—the culmination of decades of research and technology development—are now used worldwide, including across 40 million hectares in Brazil. They have helped boost crop yields—including helping position Brazil as a leading soybean producer and exporter; saved Brazilian farmers a combined estimated $25 billion per year; and avoided 230 million metric tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions from being released._ **What’s one sustainability effort you personally will try to adopt in the next year?** My main effort has always been related to my work. I work with microbial processes replacing partially or fully chemical fertilizers. In the last soybean crop season in Brazil, the biological solutions developed helped mitigate 260 million tons of CO2 emissions. **What is a climate solution that isn't getting the attention or funding it deserves?** In developing countries’ agriculture, great achievements could be obtained if efforts of small communities of farmers or Indians \[on indigenous\] lands were rewarded for maintaining or recovering forests, and adopting biological solutions. **What gives you hope about the future of the planet?** I’ll never give up on working for a better world, with lower pollution, regenerative agriculture, and searching for food and nutrition security. **If you could stand up and talk to world leaders at the next COP, what would you say?** I will be there. And I hope to send the message about the feasibility of using biologics to replace agrochemicals. With this, we mitigate the release of greenhouse gases and also \[increase\] access to quality food. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time-100-climate-2025/7326604/mariangela-hungria/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time-100-climate-2025/7326604/mariangela-hungria/"},"headline":"Mariangela Hungria","datePublished":"2025-10-30T11:30:16.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-03T01:01:47.871Z","description":"","url":"https://time.com/collections/time-100-climate-2025/7326604/mariangela-hungria/","keywords":["TIME100 Climate 2025","list","franchise","Magazine","Special Project","sponsorshipblock","Accolades"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltae7ad69d55f21e1d/6998caf725f3ee40566451e3/Defenders-Mariangela-Hungria.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME Staff","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/time-staff/"}],"creator":"TIME Staff","articleSection":"Climate","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltae7ad69d55f21e1d/6998caf725f3ee40566451e3/Defenders-Mariangela-Hungria.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/climate/","name":"Climate"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time100-climate-2025/","name":"TIME100 Climate 2025"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/time-100-climate-2025/7326604/mariangela-hungria/","name":"Mariangela Hungria"}}]}] ```