Environment in Germany Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Germany is one of Europe’s most densely populated countries, with over 230 inhabitants per square kilometer. It also has a prosperous and technologically powerful economy, the fifth largest in the world. Despite its density and strong economy, both factors often compounding environmental problems, it ranks within the top 25 percent of countries categorized in the 2005 Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI). This index, developed by the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network at Columbia University, looks at the ability of nations to protect the environment in the upcoming decades. The higher ESI score a country receives, “the better positioned it is to maintain favorable environmental conditions into the future,” according to Daniel Esty. Within the European Union, Germany ranks 10th of 22 countries, and of high population density countries, in which over half the land area has a density exceeding 100 persons per square kilometers, Germany ranks second only to Japan. While Germany has a positive sustainable outlook, it has had to implement various laws in the past in order to deal with its environmental problems.

In 1970, the government issued an Emergency Program for Environmental Protection, which dealt with the control of air, water, and noise pollution, waste disposal, and the protection of nature. This program was based on three critical principles: the prevention principle, the polluter-pays principle, and the cooperation principle. The prevention principle aims at avoiding pollution and environmental risks before they occur, while the polluter-pays principle assigns the costs of pollution to the polluter who is responsible. Only when no distinct polluter can be identified will the government bear the cost. The principle of cooperation states that environmental protection is a task that must be shared equally by the government, citizens, and corporations. Also, it states that involvement by the community is crucial to the acceptance of decisions made by the governmental administration.

Environmental Momentum

As the environmental movement gathered strength in state politics, an amendment to Germany’s Basic Law was added in 1972, which stressed the importance of environmental protection. The Basic Law, Germany’s modern constitution of 1949, gave the 11 German states power to create laws concerning the environment. The amendment in 1972 added legislative jurisdiction over waste, air, water, and noise pollution to the existing duties of the federal government. This change also allowed for the creation of an environmental administration, called the Environmental Protection Division, set under the Interior Ministry. A further amendment to the Basic Law in 1994 secured environmental protection within basic institutional principles. The amendment states that the federal government has a responsibility for future generations, and therefore “it shall protect the natural basis of life” whenever a state entity takes action, according to the German Embassy in Washington, D.C.

Germany’s environmental policy asserts, “protection of the environment can only be truly successful if it places equal importance on air, water and soil,” as explained by the German Embassy in Washington, D.C. The ecological political party, the Green Party, have had a positive influence over Germany’s environmental objectives, while impacting the phasing out of nuclear power, endorsing energy efficiency, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and making alternative fuel sources possible. As a result, there are many examples of the government taking action to deal with the issues of clean air, renewable energy, climate protection, waste management, and the phasing out of nuclear energy.

While Germany has steadily advanced its environmental policy and management since the beginning of the 1970s, environmental problems, most noticeably air pollution, abounded in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Reliance on brown coal for electricity, heavy industrialization, and traffic harmed forests and air quality throughout Germany. Prior to the 1970s, acid rain was not taken as a serious threat to the environment, until a 1981 cover story ran in the German magazine Der Spiegel. In the article, a German scientist hypothesized that Germany’s forests were dying as a result of acid rain and thus the issue became highly publicized. This was a wake-up call for the German population and instilled a popular call to action, likely due to the German cultural love for forests. After German reunification in 1990, it was noted that air pollution, acid rain, and habitat degradation were particularly severe in the former East Germany. Additionally, the disparity of energy efficiency and air quality control between East and West Germany was enormous. A move away from the strong reliance on brown coal, improvements in energy efficiency, and the closing down of plants causing major pollution helped the environment recover in the Eastern states.

Clean Air and Renewable Energy

Over the last decades, and largely in response to forest death from acid rain, Germany set up a clean air program to reduce harmful emissions output and eliminate certain elements contributing to air pollution. The program has been successful in reducing sulfur dioxide levels by more than 60 percent in the western states, and by 90 percent in the eastern states between 1995 and 2005. Further improvements will likely proliferate due to a ban in 2000 of all leaded gasoline. Recently, the EU has introduced the concept of sulfur-free fuels, which would reduce a car’s fuel consumption by as much as 20 percent.

Another area in which Germany has introduced new laws pertains to renewable energies. The government under Chancellor Helmut Kohl (in power 1982-98) actively promoted the use of renewable energy through the Electricity Feed Act. This act was passed in January 1991 and regulated “the feed-in of electricity from renewable energies to the grid,” according to the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety. This act stated that the grid system operator was obligated to purchase the electricity at a fixed rate, a feed-in tariff. In 2000, this act was replaced by an act entitled the Renewable Energy Sources Act, which had a more expansive scope. This revised act required grid operators to feed in electricity from renewable sources as a priority, and pay the minimum fixed fee for the electricity.

Wind power is a renewable energy that has flourished in Germany. Currently, Germany has about 39 percent of the world’s wind energy, making it the world leader in wind power generation. Since the Renewable Energy Sources Act went into effect, Germany’s electricity grid operators have purchased over 500 million Euros of wind power energy. The addition of this renewable energy to the grids has had a positive environmental effect; in 2001, the use of wind power reduced CO2 emissions by approximately 10 million tons. In addition to air pollution and renewable energies, Germany, as one of the worlds’ industrialized nations, committed itself to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions in 1997 by signing the Kyoto Protocol. Germany has already reduced its greenhouse gas emission from 1990 levels by 18.7 percent, and the country plans to continue the reduction to 21 percent between 2008 and 2012.

Eco-Tax and Other Reforms

In 1999, Social Democrat Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, whose party governed in alliance with the Greens from 1998-2005, introduced Eco-Tax Reform. The goals of the Eco-Tax Reform included climate protection and employment generation. The Eco-Tax increased the general taxes on fuel, gas, and electricity for consumers, raised industry and farming taxes, and was to aid in the reduction of social welfare taxes from 42.3 percent to 40 percent of gross income. The Eco-Tax Reform was also put forward to decrease Germany’s dependency on polluting energies and thereby create new environmental jobs. According to a study Commissioned by the German Federal Environmental Agency (UBA), the Eco-Tax Reform has helped Germany attain its goals. It cut CO2 emissions by approximately 20 million tons and created 60,000 new jobs.

Waste management is another environmental issue that is being tackled by the German government. In 1990, German households produced over 38 million tons of waste, while commercial waste accounted for over 15 million tons. Due to the potential damage to soil and groundwater from this waste, the German Bundestag in September 1994 adopted the Closed Substance Cycle and Waste Management Act, which promoted “closed substance cycle waste management in order to conserve natural resources and to ensure environmentally compatible disposal of waste,” according to Jürgen Giegrich. Waste-management laws focused on creating low-waste products and recycling, which the government hopes will eventually produce no waste at all, hence a closed cycle. Adhering to the polluter-pays principle, the waste stemming from products must be accepted for recycling by that product’s seller or manufacturer. In order to accommodate this process, the Dual System was set up as a private enterprise to collect the various packaging materials. License fees permitting manufacturers and supplies of packaging material to place a Green Dot on their product finances this enterprise. The dot, while not an indicator that the product is made of recyclable material, simply tells consumers that the packaging should be recycled via the Dual System, which can be done in household curbside bins or municipal bins. For Germans, the commitment to waste separation and recycling is clearly seen by the four bins in front of every house: one blue, yellow, green, and gray, each of which is used to recycle a different type of material.

Germany’s phasing out of nuclear energy has been a controversial topic. Regardless, in 1998, Germany announced its plans to phase out nuclear energy following the formation of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Green Party coalition. The chief reasons for this move were the unacceptable risks connected with nuclear energy, specifically the disposal of radioactive waste and the potential for nuclear reactor meltdowns. In June 2000, a plan was announced that restricted the amount of future electricity production from power plants. A year later, the federal government and all energy suppliers using nuclear power had agreed that each nuclear reactor would be limited to producing 23.3 billion kWh at maximum operating capacity. This created a roughly 32-year phaseout period, and the last power station should go out of service in 2032. Germany operates 19 nuclear power stations, which provide about 30 percent of Germany’s electricity requirements. This is up from only 12 percent in 1980.

While Germany has a long history of strong commitment toward environmental protection, it still has a long road ahead of it. Sustainability is one of the guiding principles cutting across all sections of government. The ultimate goal of this principle is to reach concord between economic growth and environmental preservation and protection, whereby sustainable development is compatible with present needs while not jeopardizing future generations. As the 2005 Environmental Sustainability Index suggests, Germany is heading in the right direction.

Bibliography:

C. Esty et al., 2005 Environmental Sustainability Index: Benchmarking National Environmental Stewardship. (Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy, 2005);
Miranda Schreurs, Environmental Politics in Japan, Germany, and the United States (Cambridge University Press, 2002);
Ute Sprenger, “Return to Sender,” New Internationalist (v.295, 1997).