Climate protection outrivals environmental protection

The focus on climate protection by activists and politicians could overshadow necessary efforts in environmental protection, Ferdinan Knauß writes in the business weekly WirtschaftsWoche. “The preservation of biological diversity, of natural habitats and landscapes, of forests and wild animals has shifted out of the public focus and out of policymakers’ priorities due to a fixation on climate,” Knauß says. The environmental protection group International Union for Conservation and Natural Resources (IUCN) says climate change ranks low among reasons for species extinction, Knauß writes, clearly outweighed by factors such as land use for housing and industry or pesticides use in farming. The fixation on climate protection “mirrors a tendency of the political class (not only in Germany but here especially) to stress abstract global problems at the expense of ignoring concrete local catastrophes,” Knauß argues.

Read the article in German here.

See the CLEW dossier COP23 – All eyes on Germany for more information.