The end of the nature con­ser­va­tion treaty

The argu­ment has been going on for a long time, now it is decid­ed. On the one hand there were the farm­ers, who want­ed to be roy­al­ly reward­ed for all nature con­ser­va­tion mea­sures on their land by the tax­pay­er, sup­port­ed by agro-savvy con­ser­va­tion­ists who ran through the land­scape with their check­book and want­ed to reward every hedge and every pond in the cleared agri­cul­tur­al land­scape. In the good years it worked quite well, there was plen­ty of mon­ey – at least vir­tu­al­ly – and the farm­ers should also have their share of it. But in the lean years, which accord­ing to bib­li­cal expe­ri­ence fol­low the fat years, there is sim­ply no mon­ey left for con­ser­va­tion, an obvi­ous luxury.
This is cur­rent­ly becom­ing clear from the around 1.3 mil­lion hectares of pri­or­i­ty eco­log­i­cal areas in Ger­many that farm­ers have had to leave unused in order to receive EU agri­cul­tur­al sub­si­dies. Russia’s bru­tal attack on Ukraine and the asso­ci­at­ed lack of food and feed, and poten­tial­ly also fos­sil fuels, are now lead­ing to the ter­mi­na­tion of these nature con­ser­va­tion mea­sures. In the future, these areas may also be used for grow­ing grain, even if only as ani­mal feed. None of this makes sense or is nec­es­sary. These eco­log­i­cal pri­or­i­ty areas make up only a tiny frac­tion of the agri­cul­tur­al area in Ger­many. Inci­den­tal­ly, a good half of Ger­man grain pro­duc­tion is used as ani­mal feed. The eco­log­i­cal focus areas are there­fore of no impor­tance for human nutri­tion. The Danes were smarter at the time: at the begin­ning of the First World War in 1914, as the largest pig farmer in Europe, they quick­ly slaugh­tered and fed their Bris­tle cat­tle. After that, they could use the pig feed to feed the peo­ple and – unlike Ger­many – got through the years of hunger well.
In addi­tion, almost ten per­cent of the world grain har­vest is not used for food and ani­mal feed, but for the pro­duc­tion of bio­fu­els. In Ger­many alone, five per­cent of the arable land is used for bio­fu­el pro­duc­tion. Welthunger­hil­fe is right­ly call­ing for a change of direc­tion here and, for exam­ple, to give up the ten per­cent pro­por­tion of E10 petrol. It is not time­ly to grow ener­gy crops on good agri­cul­tur­al sites so that rich peo­ple can sup­pos­ed­ly dri­ve around in heavy vehi­cles ecologically.
The nature con­ser­va­tion con­tract has there­fore dis­ap­peared into thin air faster than expect­ed. Going back will be long and ardu­ous, espe­cial­ly since the ener­gy tran­si­tion that is being pushed ahead at the same time requires an incred­i­ble amount of space, no longer for open­cast lig­nite min­ing, but now for wind tur­bines with their huge foun­da­tions and long access roads or the pho­to­volta­ic sys­tems placed every­where in the land­scape. Farm­ers get far more mon­ey for this than con­trac­tu­al nature con­ser­va­tion can ever offer them. Farm­ers are econ­o­mists, they will opt for more mon­ey. Species pro­tec­tion, or as you can put it even more beau­ti­ful­ly in Greek-Latin, bio­di­ver­si­ty pro­tec­tion only plays a sec­ondary role.
The Bünd­nis 90/Die Grü­nen par­ty decid­ed in favor of wind ener­gy in the indis­putable con­tra­dic­tion between species pro­tec­tion and the pro­mo­tion of wind ener­gy. In a key issues paper pre­sent­ed by the two Green Fed­er­al Min­is­ters for Eco­nom­ic Affairs and the Envi­ron­ment, Robert Habeck and Stef­fi Lemke in April 2022, only 16 breed­ing bird species are list­ed as species rel­e­vant for wind pow­er plan­ning. In Bran­den­burg, for exam­ple, these have also includ­ed cranes, bit­terns and bit­terns, curlews, ruffs, red­shanks, corn­crakes and black-tailed god­wits, as well as whoop­er and minia­ture swans, black grouse and caper­cail­lie, and the great bus­tard. These are no longer tak­en into account in the key issues paper by the two fed­er­al min­is­ters. After all, the fed­er­al states can con­tin­ue to cre­ate their own reg­u­la­tions for bats, but no longer for birds because of the “over­rid­ing pub­lic inter­est” of wind ener­gy. In the future, wind tur­bines will con­tin­ue to be installed in the for­est, which is already groan­ing and groan­ing under the drought caused by cli­mate change and is there­fore threat­ened by pest infes­ta­tion and wind­throw. Now it is addi­tion­al­ly bro­ken up by the numer­ous, solid­i­fied access roads and has to accom­mo­date the large and heavy con­crete foun­da­tions in its ground. What is new, how­ev­er, accord­ing to the key issues paper by the two “green” fed­er­al min­is­ters is that in future wind tur­bines should also be pos­si­ble across the board in land­scape pro­tec­tion areas (LSGs). Only NATURA 2000 areas and world cul­tur­al and nat­ur­al her­itage sites will be exclud­ed in the future.
How­ev­er, the own­er can still defend him­self against wind pow­er and pho­to­volta­ic sys­tems on his prop­er­ty, pri­vate own­ers of forests and fields are unlike­ly to do so because of the enor­mous prof­its that can be expect­ed. This is where non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tions, asso­ci­a­tions and foun­da­tions come into play. The non-prof­it asso­ci­a­tion of the Friends of the Ger­­man-Pol­ish Euro­pean Nation­al Park Low­er Oder Val­ley e.V. (Nation­al Park Asso­ci­a­tion), for exam­ple, only allows the instal­la­tion of wind tur­bines out­side of pro­tect­ed areas of all kinds, with appro­pri­ate dis­tances to these, out­side of forests and at the nec­es­sary dis­tance from impor­tant breed­ing grounds rar­er birds. Pho­to­volta­ic sys­tems may not be set up on its agri­cul­tur­al or forestry land. In the opin­ion of the Nation­al Park Asso­ci­a­tion, they belong on sealed sur­faces and on roofs, most of which are still unused in Ger­many for ener­gy purposes.
The Greens are once again try­ing to kill two birds with one stone and to pro­mote pho­to­volta­ic sys­tems on rewet­ted fen sites, to allow dual-use sys­tems, so to speak. How­ev­er, a low moor does not only con­sist of water, but of a com­plex com­mu­ni­ty of plants and ani­mals, which can­not devel­op so splen­did­ly under pho­to­volta­ic systems.
In short, what remains but res­ig­na­tion? Actu­al­ly only the old recipe that the Nation­al Park Asso­ci­a­tion has enforced for 30 years, even against resis­tance from offi­cial nature con­ser­va­tion in Pots­dam: In future, nature con­ser­va­tion must become an equal play­er in the cap­i­tal­ist com­pe­ti­tion for the lim­it­ed and cov­et­ed area, pow­er­ful and assertive, but non-prof­it, in con­trast to its self-serv­ing com­peti­tors for the area. That’s his unique sell­ing point, he has to grow with this pound. Like every fight for lim­it­ed resources, this fight is waged with hard drums, noth­ing is giv­en to you. But, as for­mer Fed­er­al Envi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Angela Merkel would have liked to say, if she had put it that way, there is no alternative.

Dr. rer. nat. Ans­gar Vössing
Deputy Chair­man of the Board