Even five years after its announcement, the Bavarian state government still lacks an effective strategy against the high consumption of land. For 2021, the land consumption was 10.3 hectares (ha) per day and thus even higher than in 2018, when it was exactly ten hectares. In 2019 (10.8 ha) and 2020 (11.6 ha) the land consumption was even higher. How high the consumption was in 2022 has not yet been published – more recent figures will probably only be available after the state elections in October.
“We want to significantly and permanently reduce land consumption in the Free State. A careful use of land serves to protect our livelihoods and our homeland,” says the coalition agreement. To this end, the CSU and Freie Wahler wanted to “aim for a benchmark for land consumption (settlement and traffic area) of five hectares per day in the state planning law” and develop effective control instruments together with the municipalities. Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) himself had announced an incentive system in 2018 that would motivate municipalities to save space.
Although the state government, supported by the CSU and Free Voters, has clearly missed its own goal from the coalition agreement, it only this week rejected another application for a binding upper limit of five hectares from 2028 on land use. “The strict upper limit regulation for the new use of land and also the planned-economy allocation of land to the municipalities must be rejected,” said Economics Secretary Roland Weigert (free voters) on Wednesday in the state parliament. Any target for land use to the cities and communities is likely to be a severe violation of local self-government.
The reference to local self-government is surprising, because in other cases the state government in this legislature pursued a different approach in this regard: Bavaria still does not have the property tax C desired by the local authorities; and when the city of Munich wanted to introduce a bed tax months ago, the Ministry of the Interior quickly put a stop to it by means of a law.
“My heart is bleeding,” says conservationist Richard Mergner
Environmentalists are sounding the alarm because of the high land use. “Every day in our beautiful homeland, valuable green spaces, forests or wetlands are cleared, asphalted, built over and sealed, often they are lost forever. My heart bleeds when I see how ruthlessly our nature is being treated in times of climate and biodiversity crises,” said Richard Mergner, chairman of the Bund Naturschutzbund in Munich.
Economic interests and fantasies of growth that have fallen out of time, for example in road construction, are given priority over the preservation of livelihoods. Real efforts by the state government to stop this fatal development, on the other hand, are non-existent.
“The will to declare war on the wasting of land in Bavaria is completely lacking among the CSU and the Free Voters. They have proven that again with their rejection of our law to save land,” said Green Party leader Ludwig Hartmann. The balance sheet after five years of the Söder government is bitter. “In Bavaria, more than double the number of meadows and fields are still disappearing under concrete and asphalt every day. The next broken promise by this state government.” But Bavaria needs “a clear path – that’s what those responsible in the cities and communities long for”.