Other cabinet colleagues drive from the retreat in Meseberg to their ministry, Steffi Lemke drives to Moor. In the middle of Brandenburg, in a small town north of Oranienburg, they are awaited by a mayor, a farmer and a biologist from the state. It is a meeting like painted for the green Minister of the Environment. After all, she wants to present one of her most important projects.
A former moor, the Möllmer Seewiesen, has got its water back here and everyone is happy. The mayor, a CDU man, reports on lapwings and sandpipers, which he now hears again here. “The diversity of species has already increased,” he says. “This is total hammer.” The farmer, head of a large agricultural cooperative, is looking forward to the water that is now staying in the landscape with the moor. “This is also an answer to the drought,” he says. “It keeps the floors alive.” And the state biologist will later trudge through a lush wet meadow and say: “You’d really like to bite into it, it’s so green here.” Steffi Lemke couldn’t have found it better.
Four billion euros are to be made available over the next four years for their “Action Program for Natural Climate Protection”. Not only moors should be “rewetted” from the funds. There should also be money for the protection of old forests or for the conversion of cities into “sponge cities”, with more trees that provide shade and green spaces that can store rainwater. You are entering “a bit of new territory,” says the minister. “Never in Germany has so much money flowed from the federal level into nature conservation.” In essence, it is about bringing together nature conservation and climate protection. “We have no other chance.”
Nowhere can this be shown so vividly as with a moor. Bogs store large amounts of carbon – but when they are drained by drainage ditches, they release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. More than 90 percent of the German peat soils were drained in order to be able to farm better there. 53 million tons of carbon dioxide are released here every year. In the Möllmer Seewiesen, on the other hand, the agricultural cooperative wants to keep water buffalo in the near future. It’s going to be quite an adventure, says her boss.
Next year, the Federal Cabinet will decide on Lemke’s project
The action program is a key project for Lemke. Since the Ministry of the Environment lost responsibility for climate policy to the Ministry of Economics and Foreign Affairs, natural climate protection has been her most important approach to the topic. At the same time, it should now be much easier to make progress for moors and forests than it used to be: Lemke and her Green party colleague Cem Özdemir in the Ministry of Agriculture have declared a “house friendship”. This does not threaten the trench warfare of previous years, in which both ministries became involved in almost every project. Also around Moore.
For now, however, Lemke’s design is just a suggestion. Starting next week, countries, associations and citizens should be able to comment on this for two months. At the beginning of 2023, the Federal Cabinet should then decide on the program.