Merkel Backs EU Carbon Emissions Tax (Week in Germany, Dec. 19, 1997)

The European Union ought to use tax policy to curb emissions of carbon dioxide, Federal Minister of the Environment Angela Merkel recommended this week. In a radio interview Wednesday (December 17), Merkel explained she does not think a general law on cutting emissions is sufficient. A “whole bundle of measures” is needed, and a uniform tax on emissions - on the use of fossil fuels - ought to be among those measures. Such a tax, Merkel stressed, has to apply equally throughout the EU to prevent “distortions in economic competitiveness.” Looking ahead to the next round of international talks on protecting the climate, she also called for strict regulations in the trade of emissions credits between nations.

ENVIRONMENTAL AGENCY SEES PROGRESS (Today in Germany, July 16, 1997)

The good news is that fewer pollutants are being released into Germany’s air, water and soil. The bad news, that environmental problems are becoming ever more complex and difficult to address. So the Federal Environmental Agency (UBA: Umweltbundesamt) concludes in the “state of the environment” report it issued Tuesday (July 15). Strict regulations and emissions limits, explained Federal Minister of the Environment Angela Merkel in presenting the report, have contributed greatly to reducing the levels of contaminants introduced into the environment in recent years. Controlling individual pollutants is, however, a much more straightforward problem, she went on to observe, than responding to the environmental threats posed by the rising volume of traffic and land-use patterns in Germany or the problems of protecting the earth’s climate and biodiversity. Merkel called particular attention to the agency’s findings on eastern Germany. The new states have largely caught up to the 11 pre-unification western states in safeguarding the environment, according to the new report. Since unification in 1990, the economy of eastern Germany has grown enormously, it notes, but growth has not come at the expense of the environment. Progress has been especially marked in curbing air pollution in the east. Emissions of sulfer dioxide and carbon monoxide - once enormous due to the region’s heavy dependence on sulfer-rich brown coal before unification - have dropped sharply, as have emissions of less prevalent heavy metals such as mercury, copper and arsenic.

GERMANY TAKES STOCK ON INTERNATIONAL DAY OF THE ENVIRONMENT;
(Week in Germany, June 13, 1997)

Because protecting the environment is an existential question" for all nations, Germany wants to give greater consideration to global environmental threats in its foreign policy, Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel explained in marking the 25th annual International Day of the Environment. Speaking in Bonn Thursday (June 5), Kinkel noted that safeguarding the environment and the fundamental natural requirements for life is inseparable from the effort to assure peace and decent living standards for the peoples of the world. Threats to the environment - whether long-term problems like the thinning of the ozone layer or catastrophic events like the 1986 Chernobyl accident - do not respect national borders, he added, and therefore require global thinking in the search for solutions. The just distribution of resources in short supply and the destruction of our environment must not be allowed to become the causes of new rivalries, but rather must be the cause of forward-looking cooperation between nations," Kinkel went on to argue. Environmental foreign policy has become a form of global security policy."

By adopting more responsible policies on the consumption of energy and raw materials themselves, Germany and other industrial nations would be better able to persuade developing nations to give greater weight to environmental protection, Federal Minister of the Environment Angela Merkel suggested during an International Day of the Environment program in Bonn. The industrial nations are therefore obliged to take the lead in environmental policy," Merkel stressed.

Germany's efforts to set a good environmental example have not, according to the parliamentary opposition, been nearly as successful as Bonn has maintained. Noting that the United Nations will be holding another major environmental conference in New York at the end of the month, Social Democratic environmental expert Michael Müller used the International Day of the Environment as occasion to challenge the Kohl government's record. The government, Müller charged, has not been able to fulfill any of the promises it made five years ago at the UN Climate Conference in Rio de Janeiro and will not be able to meet the goal of a 25-percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by the year 2005. For the Social Democrats, Müller said, the International Day of the Environment is thus a sad occasion.

If Germany is to meet its emissions goals, a major change of policy is necessary, according to the independent environmental group BUND (Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland - German Association for the Protection the Environment and Nature). Contrary to the government's reports of steady reductions in CO2 emissions, BUND chairman Hubert Weinzierl told the press, emissions last year were up two percent from the level of 1994. To achieve the 25-percent reduction from 1990 emissions level the government has promised, Weinzierl said, Bonn will need to use tax policy toward environmental goals and to end environmentally harmful subsidies to areas of the economy such as transportation, agriculture and the energy industry.

NEW REPORT LOOKS AT SOIL, NOT TREES, IN EVALUATING HEALTH OF THE FORESTS
(Week in Germany, June 13, 1997)

For years, Germany has monitored the health of its woodlands and issued annual state of the forest" reports. Bonn is now going a step further and examining the roots - literally - of Waldsterben (forest death"). On Monday (June 9), the Federal Ministry of Nutrition, Agriculture and Forestry presented the government's first state of the forest floor" (Waldboden) report. Despite progress in reducing emissions of sulfur and nitrogen into the environment, State Secretary Wolfgang Gröbel summed up in presenting the report, soil concentrations of those elements remain at dangerously high levels and pose a considerable threat to forests throughout the country.

Gröbel drew particular attention to the problem of excessive levels of nitrogen in the forest floor. Trees need nitrogen as a nutrient, but too much nitrogen in the soil impairs their growth and stability. In many areas where nitrogen and sulfur contamination has raised soil acidity to particularly high levels, the report notes, trees are not developing normally, as root systems concentrate in the upper layer of humus in the forest floor and do not extend more deeply into the soil. With their roots concentrated near the surface of the forest floor, trees are more vulnerable to dehydration and wind damage.

The main source of nitrogen contamination, the new report notes, is car and truck traffic. While agriculture, specifically fertilizer run-off, is frequently cited as a source of nitrogen contamination in German rivers and ground water supplies, Gröbel said it played only a minor part in the high levels of nitrogen found in German forests. The report's findings, he went on to argue, demonstrate the importance of holding to a rigorous air-quality policy.

ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGE TO `LOVE PARADE'
(Week in Germany, June 13, 1997)

Loud, unquestionably. But a threat to the environment? The annual Love Parade" music festival has firmly established itself as one of Berlin's most popular summer highlights. A Berlin resident and the environmental group BUND are nonetheless trying to prevent the event from taking place next month on the grounds it poses a threat to the Tiergarten, the large park in the heart of Berlin where the Love Parade is to be held. Last year, they contend in a suit filed on June 10, the 750,000 parade participants did considerable harm to the park's plant and animal life; allowing the Love Parade to take place there again, they say, could result in permanent damage.

ENVIRONMENTAL GROUP TAKES BONN TO TASK FOR 'HALF-HEARTED' POLICIES

Protecting the environment stands high on Bonn's agenda, but a major German environmental organization believes the Kohl government has let economic concerns get the better of environmental policy. At the end of October, the German Union for Nature Preservation (NABU: Naturschutzbund Deutschland) issued its assessment of the government's record on the environment during the first half of the current legislative period (1994-1998). "What industry does not want is not implemented in environmental policy," NABU president Jochen Flasbarth told reporters in summarizing the conclusions of the group's "black book" (important government policy studies are commonly called "white books").

By way of example, Flasbarth cited the cabinet's failure to follow through on its 1991 plans to introduce a waste heat ordinance that would require industry to make greater use of the heat generated by manufacturing activity. This failure, he maintained, came in response to heavy lobbying by business interests. More generally, NABU's "black book" speaks critically of the Kohl government's "bondage to industry" ("Industriehörigkeit") and complains that Federal Minister of the Environment Angela Merkel pursues a half-hearted "policy of small and the smallest possible steps."

NABU is particularly disappointed with Bonn's efforts toward protecting the climate. The government's measures to reduce Germany's emissions of carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse gases" are vague and inadequate, NABU contends, as well as too heavily reliant on voluntary compliance by industry. The chancellor and his cabinet have rejected proposals for energy taxes to reduce CO2 emissions and for promoting the introduction of so-called "five liter" high efficiency automobiles, it notes. Bonn has said such initiatives should be implemented by the European Union rather than by individual states, but Bonn, NABU argues, has been one of the impediments to decisive climate protection measures at the European level.

[The Week in Germany, German Information Center, N.Y., Nov.8, 1996]

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