Saturday, December 18, 2021
New environment minister warns
Lemke: Species crisis as dramatic as climate crisis
The energy transition is one of the federal government’s central projects. Environment Minister Lemke warns that nature conservation will suffer. Your warning comes shortly after the announcement from the economic department, which is also led by the Greens, that they want to relax nature conservation guidelines.
The new Federal Environment Minister Steffi Lemke considers the extinction of species to be “at least as dramatic” as the climate crisis. “The species crisis will be the next big battle,” said Lemke of the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”. “It is a direct threat to our livelihoods.” The aim must be to protect the climate and biodiversity at the same time. This could succeed if more forests were managed in a natural way, moors were watered and floodplains were renatured, said Lemke.
At the same time, she warned against playing off the energy transition and nature conservation against each other. Recently, calls had been made to relax nature conservation rules in order to be able to erect wind turbines more quickly. The coalition is “doomed” to find solutions for both climate and species crises. “We also know that industrial agriculture is the greatest threat to biodiversity,” said Lemke. “But nobody would say: Then we won’t do any more agriculture.”
The State Secretary in the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Sven Giegold, recently announced that he would campaign for the relaxation of nature conservation guidelines. He demanded that the focus should no longer be on the individual endangered animal, but on the entire population. Criticism came from environmental groups.
Lemke would also like to enforce a “right to repair”. “Far too often a product is not repaired, but simply replaced by a new one,” said Lemke of the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”. “The simplest repairs fail because devices are glued or provided with special screws.” Changing this is socially and ecologically beneficial.