Environment Minister Lemke on COP15: There are four important points

The World Conference on Nature is entering the home stretch. Environment Minister Lemke explains in the daily News-Interview at which four points the negotiations are stuck – and why she is still optimistic that an agreement will be reached.

tagesschau.de: What is the status of the negotiations in Montreal?

Steffi Lemke: It looks like a lot of progress has started on detailed questions on the technical level, also on important points. But the political controversies are still ahead of us in the next three days.

tagesschau.de: What will be the big points of contention?

lemke: The sticking points will be the finances, the question of whether quality criteria should also be set for these protected areas, the question of reducing pesticides and the elimination of environmentally harmful subsidies. There is still controversy about this.

quarrel about money

tagesschau.de: What are these controversies? Are there problems that do not want to be paid or that no quality standards can be set?

lemke: There are certainly countries that say: We don’t want to apply any strict, binding criteria. And there is the demand from the global south, which says: The industrialized countries must support us if we are to set up protected areas. We don’t have as much money as the industrialized countries to do nature conservation. If we are no longer to cut down forests to protect the climate and nature, then we need financial support.

There are commitments from the industrialized countries – Germany in particular made a very large financial commitment at a very early stage – but so far this has not been enough for the countries of the South. And that’s why we need an agreement now find something that we will agree on together over the next three days. And that won’t surprise you, it’s not easy.

“Gives great will to make progress”

tagesschau.de: Are you a bit frustrated now that you’ve arrived and seen the status of the negotiations?

lemke: No, I belong to the faction that says: we are here to make progress. I don’t think so much about what doesn’t work, but rather about what works and how we can achieve international understanding here. It’s difficult with almost 200 states, with the large amount of money at stake and with the really strict criteria that we want to apply. It’s in the nature of things to argue.

I came to support the German negotiating team and that of the EU Commission. Many other ministers who arrived yesterday during the day did the same. And there is already a great will to make progress. You can definitely say that. Concern about the loss of our nature unites the states here.

No “paper park”

tagesschau.de: Germany is, if you can put it that way, not exactly a pioneer when it comes to nature conservation. A good six percent of the areas in Germany are nature reserves. Actually, that’s still relatively little, isn’t it?

lemke: That is the question of which protected areas are included. If we were to take all of Germany’s protection categories, we would already be at 30 percent. For example, if we include the landscape protection areas. That is exactly what this argument about quality criteria is about.

I want us not only to have so-called “paper parks”, i.e. protected areas that only exist on paper, but that we also have something like biosphere reserves or our national parks, where there are different zones: very strictly protected areas and those in which sustainable use is permitted. Exactly that is the subject of negotiation here, how we shape it internationally.

1.5 billion for international nature conservation

tagesschau.de: Species-rich areas are, for example, Madagascar and Sri Lanka, or the area around the Himalayas. These are all countries where species protection cannot be thought of immediately because there is a lack of money. How much support can these countries get from countries that are richer?

lemke: On behalf of the federal government, I have pledged 1.5 billion euros from 2025 at the latest – per year – for international nature conservation. There is a commitment from the EU Commission, there are individual countries that have already made commitments. And we also encourage the private sector to get involved here. There are billions in profits worldwide. Money is made every day with the overexploitation of nature – this has to stop.

And we encourage companies to pay into international funds here too, so I hope that at the end of the day there will be a sufficiently large sum to protect such valuable areas – such as the Amazon rainforest, which we absolutely must preserve for climate protection , but which is also very rich in species – to protect. And the hope is that we as an international community of states will mobilize enough money to also fix those substantive points that do not allow greenwashing, but where it is clear: Here nature has priority.

“Are networked via species protection”

tagesschau.de: Do you think conferences like this one in Montreal are still the right place to negotiate something like this? Because in the end it could happen again that some countries block and there is no agreement after all. Couldn’t it be better if some countries, like Germany for example, just go ahead and say: Let’s just do it now?

lemke: That is the big question, which was also asked at the climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh. But we have to talk to each other. We are connected to each other in the world through nature and the climate. And we therefore have to make joint agreements.

That doesn’t rule out individual states taking the lead. Germany is doing this both internationally with the 1.5 billion euros, but also with the Natural Climate Protection Action Program, with which we are investing four billion over the next four years in the renaturation of species-rich ecosystems such as river meadows. Here, too, the federal government is investing more money than any other before. And I hope that over the next three days, here in Montreal, I will have the momentum I need to actually achieve a negotiation goal, also for international nature conservation.

tagesschau.de: But when you come home from this conference and say what you have achieved and which areas in Germany you would like to protect further – then the federal states can say: OK, but nature conservation is our business. And we can’t afford all of that at the moment. In other words, Germany is not making very good progress. Or is it?

lemke: I do not think so. The natural climate protection action program comprises four billion euros – never before has there been so much money available for nature conservation in Germany. And we have just spoken to all the environment ministers of the federal states about how we can improve protection where necessary. That means I see a lot of commitment here.

But you are right insofar as we are also facing infringement procedures from the EU because not enough nature conservation has taken place. This is exactly the balance that we need to get better at very quickly, because species are dying out under our hands.

“I remain optimistic”

tagesschau.de: What happens if this conference fails and there will be no real outcome?

lemke: I am here so that this conference does not fail. I will work on that in the next few hours and days. We are here with a great negotiating team and the EU is one of the drivers of the negotiations with a strong position. I speak to many colleagues every day, to many environment ministers, and there are rapprochements on many points. I therefore remain optimistic that we can reach an agreement.