Status: 01/26/2023 06:00 a.m
By 2030, Germany wants to place at least 30 percent of land and sea under nature protection. Formally, the goal has already been achieved – but there are very different definitions.
There is a wide range of different protected areas for animals and plants in Germany: nature parks, bird sanctuaries, biosphere reserves, national parks. Everyone has different goals. Thus, the category “natural monuments” can also mean in individual cases that only individual trees are protected, and “natural parks“You can even use it for agriculture.
The goal set at the World Conference on Nature last December of protecting 30 percent of the earth’s surface has already been achieved in Germany, as the Federal Environment Ministry (BMUV) writes when asked. However, this only applies if you add up the protected areas of all categories.
More quality in the protected areas
Overall, almost 40 percent of the land area in Germany is under protection and even 45 percent of the sea area. However, environmentalists criticize that the habitats of animals and plants are currently being cut up in many protected areas, making it more difficult for them to survive.
This also applies to new construction projects, for example if they serve to expand local transport. Then the argument is that climate protection is opposed to nature conservation from a local point of view.
Connect areas better with each other
The Federal Ministry for the Environment also wants to work in future to ensure that the protected areas are better networked with one another. “When implementing the decisions of the World Conference on Nature, we will place a clear focus on the qualitative further development of our existing protected areas here in Germany,” says a spokeswoman. This should be done through better management, which aims even more strongly at good conservation status and the resilience of ecosystems.
Experts like Magnus Wessel from the Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland (BUND eV) also demand this. In particular, bids and rules would have to be better enforced in the areas. Because although it looks on paper as if nature conservation has a high priority, biodiversity in Germany is still suffering. This has been shown by various studies in recent years, for example on insect mortality and the low genetic diversity deer.
Only seven percent strictly protected
Only two categories of protected areas are really strictly protected in Germany. Strictly protected means in concrete terms that nature conservation takes precedence over human needs. This applies in national parks, which only cover 0.6 percent of the area, and in nature reserves. They make noise Federal Agency for Nature Conservation 6.3 percent of the area in Germany.
Agricultural use is prohibited there, walkers are not allowed to light a fire and must stay on the marked paths. Any other use of these areas is only permitted if it does not conflict with the protection objective. Therefore, building there is largely prohibited. In general, no interventions should be made in nature here in order to guarantee the habitat of the wild plant and animal species.
Areas with lower protection status
However, this protection is of much less importance in biosphere reserves, for example, which are also declared as protected areas. They are intended as model regions for the coexistence of man and nature. In regions such as the “Elbe river landscape”, the Rhön and the “Palatinate Forest-Northern Vosges” tourism and sustainable management are promoted. And areas that have been designated as landscape protection areas may not be redeveloped, but farmers are often even allowed to use conventional fertilizers there.
international differences
In Germany, however, one must keep in mind that it is a very densely populated industrial country, says Matthias Glaubrecht, head of the Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change. This makes it difficult to strictly protect large areas.
But he also demands that Germany really guarantee biodiversity in the already protected areas. Faith law also sees Germany as having a responsibility internationally. States of the Global North should give money to nations of the Global South: “Biodiversity is much greater in these countries and is also preserved. We have to help that it stays that way in the future.”