Agro giants and NGOs stand together against Bolsonaro

The 19th-century essayist Charles Dudley Warner once said “politics make strange bedfellows.” The quote is appropriated to describe a newly-formed alliance between environmentalist NGOs and major agricultural producers — who together are calling for the Jair Bolsonaro administration to enforce deforestation controls in biomes such as the Amazon rainforest and the Pantanal wetlands. In a document sent out this week to Vice President Hamilton Mourão, who presides over the Amazon Council, 230 institutions put forward a list of measures the government should immediately implement to curb deforestation rates.

The so-called Climate, Forest, and Agriculture Coalition unites entities as diverse as the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), Youth Climate Leaders, the World Resources Institute (WRI), alongside companies usually on the opposing side of the ring — for instance, meat giants JBS and Marfrig, food-processing firm Amaggi, and German fertilizers producer Bayer.

“The coalition is at the government’s disposal to provide information, help with coordinating efforts with multiple sectors, or any action that could speed up a solution...