Close to Nature for 40 Years – Federal Environment Ministry celebrates its anniversary

Federal Minister Carsten Schneider will open the ceremony commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Federal Environment Ministry today. The theme of the anniversary celebration is "Close to Nature for 40 Years". Guests will include representatives of civil society as well as past environment ministers, including former Chancellor Angela Merkel. The Chernobyl nuclear disaster was the catalyst that prompted the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety to be established on 6 June 1986. Since then, the Federal Environment Ministry has evolved: besides protecting and preserving the environment, it now also works to ensure that the German economy remains innovative and strong through new environmental technologies.

Federal Environment Minister Carsten Schneider commented: "Environmental policy has made our country stronger, cleaner and safer. This is also thanks to the many dedicated people who work to protect our environment. Looking back over the years, we can see that these efforts have paid off. I can still vividly remember how polluted the air and rivers used to be. Today, we live longer because we breathe cleaner air. We can swim again in bodies of water that were once polluted. And what’s more: the ozone hole is closing again, acid rain is a thing of the past and the phase-out of nuclear power is complete. The fact that renewable energies are now the best and cheapest energy source in the world is also a credit to German environmental policy. This gives us the chance today to stop harmful climate change and to make ourselves less dependent on expensive and unreliable fossil fuel imports by using domestic energy sources. This example also shows how environmental policy has evolved: we protect and preserve, but we have also created the conditions to enable progress, jobs and growth."

To mark its 40th anniversary, the Federal Environment Ministry wants to celebrate the commitment of the many champions of nature conservation in Germany who have worked and continue to work day in and day out in the interests of our environment, our natural world and our climate. That is why the programme for the anniversary event combines the perspectives of policymakers with those of civil society. In addition to keynote speeches by former Chancellor and former Environment Minister Angela Merkel and the current Federal Environment Minister Carsten Schneider, there will also be appearances by former ministers Steffi Lemke, Svenja Schulze, Barbara Hendricks, Peter Altmaier and Jürgen Trittin. They will be joined in the discussion by Kai Niebert (Deutscher Naturschutzring), Luisa Neubauer (Fridays for Future), Michael Vassiliadis (Industriegewerkschaft Bergbau, Chemie, Energie), Wolfgang Ehmke (BI Lüchow-Dannenberg), Franziska Tannenberger (Greifswald Moor Centrum), Milena Glimbovski (Original unverpackt) and the author and journalist Christiane Grefe.

Over the past 40 years, environmental policy has achieved a great deal for people and nature. For example, international efforts have succeeded in closing the hole in the ozone layer. Renewable energies have become the cheapest and dominant energy source in the world, and the electric car is now a serious alternative to the combustion engine. Mountains of rubbish in landfills have become a thing of the past. Instead, recycling in Germany is now a significant and export-driven sector of the economy. Other examples of progress that would not have been possible without environmental policy can be found here: