Environmentalists accuse the federal government of delaying the planned peatland protection strategy and thus preventing it for this legislative period.
This meant that time had been lost in the fight against climate change, criticized Felix Grützmacher, a moor specialist for the Nature Conservation Union (Nabu).
The managing director of the Succow Foundation, Jan Peters, spoke of a “poor certificate from the federal government”.
The federal government does not manage to meet the goals it has set itself.
In the last coalition agreement, the Union and the SPD decided to adopt a peatland protection strategy and to implement the first measures during this legislative period. But the Ministry of the Environment and the Ministry of Agriculture could not come to an agreement. The environment ministry informed the German press agency on request that the strategy would no longer be adopted in this legislature. Numerous environmental protection organizations had already criticized the draft as inadequate.
Most of the moors in Germany have been drained, for example for agriculture or forestry. As a result, the peat gradually decomposes and large amounts of greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere. In Germany, according to Grützmacher, more than 40 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) came from the agricultural use of peat soils. That is the second largest single source. By stopping the drying out - the so-called rewetting - emissions can be prevented. According to Grützmacher, however, this requires an extensive structural change in parts of agriculture.