Green Belt Germany
The Green Belt Germany is a nature conservation project by several federal states . The almost 1,400 km long strip of land along the former inner-German border is to remain or become a green belt again. The 50–200 m wide strip of terrain extends from Travemünde to the border triangle at Hof . The Green Belt Germany is part of the Central European section of the Green Belt Europe. The Green Belt is the largest biotope network in Germany. There are 600 threatened species in Germany in the associated 150 nature reserves .
The German Green Belt runs almost entirely on the east side of the former inner-German border. Insofar as border corrections have been made since 1990, it can, however, also run through a West German state. This applies, for example, to the northeast bank of the Elbe in what is now Lower Saxony's Neuhaus district .
Protection status
Although conservationists were committed to the Green Belt before 1990, only around 68% of the Green Belt were protected as a nature reserve , national park , biosphere reserve or Natura 2000 area in 2012 . The remaining area was not adequately protected by conservationists in 2012. A significant part of the area of the Green Belt is privately owned. According to Art. 14 (1) GG, the owners' interests in use must not be disregarded, although the same article (in paragraph 2) states: “Property obliges. Its use should also serve the common good. ”In practice, the interests of private owners of the border properties often take precedence over the concerns of conservationists.
The Green Belt of Thuringia was designated as a National Natural Monument in November 2018, the Green Belt Saxony-Anhalt in October 2019 . The Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety announced in a press release on May 18, 2019 that the entire Green Belt Germany should receive the status of a national natural monument.
Biotopes and animal species in the green belt
The Green Belt is a cross-section through almost all German landscapes (except the high mountains), from northern German lowlands to low mountain ranges. Therefore, a variety found there habitat types such as brownfields, verbuschte areas Altgrasfluren, pioneer forest , streams, wetlands and marshes.
Meadow landscape on the Lüdersdorfer Bach between Northwest Mecklenburg and Lübeck (Schleswig-Holstein).
Remaining piece of the border system on the Elbe in the Neuhaus district (today located in Lower Saxony). On the right is the Kolonnenweg.
Conversion of the border tower on the Elbe near Lenzen (Brandenburg) for tourist purposes with advertising for the Green Belt
Green belt near Sorge (Saxony-Anhalt) and Hohegeiß (Lower Saxony) in the Harz Mountains . Forest formation on the border strip is still in its early stages.
Grenzlandweg in Eichsfeld at the former Duderstadt - Worbis border crossing in an open landscape.
View from the US observation tower in the Point Alpha memorial (in Hesse) in the border strip at the Fulda Gap .
Thuringian Green Belt, seen from the Thuringian Tower , recognizable as a lighter deciduous forest belt . In this case, the status quo in 1989 (artificially created forest clearing) was abandoned.
The Kolonnenweg crosses a road from the Bavarian to the Saxon Vogtland in the middle of a meadow landscape .
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The diversity of the landscape is an important retreat and home to many animal and plant species: rare orchids such as lady's slipper , the wedge damsel (a genus of the mermaid ), the piebald butterfly , the whinchat , the red-backed shrike , the black stork , the kingfisher and the otter .
Creation of the biotope network
The area along the inner German border remained almost untouched in the period between its final cordoning off, fortification and military guarding in 1952 by the GDR and its lifting as a result of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The "death strip" - formerly known in the west - right next to the metal mesh fence, was regularly plowed and kept completely plant-free with herbicides , but that was only about 100 km² along the entire border. Immediately to this "control strip" (official GDR language ) was followed by another, at least 500 meters wide, also strictly guarded "protective strip" with low, steppe-like vegetation (to have a clear field of vision) over an area of over 700 km² had, as well as a “5 km exclusion zone ” in which human activities (especially traffic and industry) were strictly controlled and thus severely restricted. These zones developed into a retreat for animal and plant species threatened with extinction . The entire area, which was inevitably exposed to little human influence for many decades, is therefore considerably larger, an estimated almost 8000 km² (1400 km × min. 5.7 km), about half the area of Thuringia .
History of the "Green Belt" project
The knowledge of species and habitat diversity came from nature conservation studies in the border region from the time when the inner-German border still existed. Already in the mid-1970s, the pupil Kai Frobel from Hassenberg , today the species protection officer of the BUND, regularly observed rare birds on his own initiative from the border with the GDR. The first mapping of the bird world was made by the Federation of Nature Conservation in Bavaria in 1979/80. In the GDR in the 1980s, under the supervision of representatives of the Ministry for State Security , young people were allowed to explore the species endowment in the area east of the border.
On December 9, 1989, around 400 nature and environmental conservationists met in Hof (Saale) . Kai Frobel's suggestion to call the “ecological [...] backbone of Central Europe” the “Green Belt” is considered to be the “birth of the Green Belt”.
Since reunification , Heinz Sielmann has also been committed to the idea of a “National Park from the Baltic Sea to the Bavarian Forest”. However, this idea has not yet been implemented.
On the occasion of a conference on "Perspectives of the Green Belt" in Bonn in July 2003, Mikhail Gorbachev took over the patronage of the project. There is also the broader vision was Green Belt Europe ( European Green Belt ) made public.
In the course of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany , the Green Belt Germany resumed its separating function in its northern section from the Bay of Lübeck to Dönitz , interrupted by what is now Lower Saxony's northeastern bank of the Elbe. “Foreigners” were not allowed to enter Schleswig-Holstein or Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania if they were traveling for tourist reasons or to visit people who were not first-degree relatives. For example, trips from Lübeck to the Green Belt as well as trips by citizens of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania to Lübeck were prohibited.
Objectives of the project
Actors from the fields of nature conservation and tourism want to work together to ensure that
- the protection and sustainable development of biotopes and species occurrences along the Green Belt are largely ensured;
- sustainable tourism is established, which will contribute to the economic strengthening of the region;
- an increase in the acceptance of the Green Belt and the measures to be carried out among the population is created;
- Both technical and content-related cross-connections between nature conservation and tourism arise.
At a meeting of the Heinrich Böll Foundation on July 11, 2019 in Salzwedel , considerations were made about how the Green Belt could have a positive effect on the Altmark region , the economically weakest region in Germany. It must be possible to use the “triad of nature conservation, border history and culture” that has already become effective in the northern and western Altmark and that emanates from the Green Belt as a “stimulus for sustainable regional development”. The Green Belt could become an “identity-creating anchor for the Altmark region”.
The Green Belt as a biotope network to be expanded
The main objective of the German Green Belt is to maintain the high ecological value of the areas that have formed as a result of the entry ban along the east side of the inner-German border. The biotope network created by the absence of people is to be preserved, gaps in the network that have arisen since 1990 are to be closed again and activities that disrupt or interrupt the biotope network are to be largely prevented. Two equally legitimate methods are used to achieve this goal: On the one hand, nature can be allowed to develop freely, with the result that, for example, heather areas are replaced by forest areas. On the other hand, one can try to maintain the status quo of 1989. For this purpose, however, z. B. heather areas are regularly grazed so that trees cannot grow large.
The BUND would like to influence the federal states to redesign various protected areas along the Green Belt. As a result, not only the core area, but also the adjacent areas are to be secured and developed as living space, especially the large-scale, neighboring and still near-natural areas that could be preserved here. For this purpose there should be "cross-links" or "lateral network axes" of biotopes in the interior of the Federal Republic of Germany and the GDR within the borders of 1989. On September 30, 2019, the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation presented the funding decision for the “Cross-linking Green Belt” project.
Members of the Federation for the Environment and Nature Conservation and German citizens should be encouraged to donate so that properties along the Green Belt can be purchased. There are different names for the donations, from “share certificates” to “shares” to sponsorships. In the first few years the BUND organized annual sightseeing tours, some of them as “shareholders' meetings”. This made the region of the former border strip attractive for tourists in the long term.
The “Green Belt Experience” project as an instrument of tourism marketing
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The Federal Agency for Nature Conservation considers it important that the regional added value in the structurally weak area along the former inner-German border receives new impetus through gentle tourism . A combination of nature conservation and tourism should achieve this effect. For this purpose, according to the BfN, the landscapes along the Green Belt and their history must be recognizable and actively perceptible for those looking for relaxation and vacationers, and their national level of awareness must be increased. Tourism managers have come up with the guiding principle “Experience nature instead of sealing it off”. A “nature tourism mission statement and marketing concept” was developed from it.
According to the BfN, lasting acceptance of the people in the region and foreign guests for the restrictions on their personal freedom in the Green Belt can only be achieved if people experience and recognize the ecological value of the area through a visit.
Three model regions were selected for the "Green Belt Experience" project:
- Elbe - Altmark - Wendland (motto: "Borderline experiences in the four-country corner")
- Harz (Motto: "Harz without borders - on Harz border paths through nature and history")
- Thuringian Forest and Slate Mountains / Franconian Forest (Motto: "Experience the Green Belt (inter) actively")
The Green Belt as a historically significant area
The first actors in the GDR who advocated the idea of a Green Belt were not only environmental activists, but also members of the GDR civil rights movement . It is very important to them and their successors that visitors to the Green Belt are reminded that "people were killed at the former border, families and friends were separated, residents were forcibly evacuated and spied on, and that many border guards could not withstand internal pressure and chose suicide" to have.
The status of a national natural monument facilitates a culture of remembrance in the Green Belt by preserving old watchtowers, border fortifications and razed villages.
implementation
For almost forty years, the 1,393-kilometer Green Belt was part of the Iron Curtain that divided Europe into two blocks.
In 2001/2002 the areas and the animals living there were recorded, financially supported by the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation and the Federal Environment Ministry . The investigation confirmed the exceptional position of the Green Belt as a chain of particularly valuable biotopes.
As the BUND reports, 109 different biotope types were recorded, half of which are on Germany's Red List . 28% of the Green Belt are protected as nature reserves, 38% are designated as so-called FFH areas . Priority areas - mostly of national importance - were determined from the data, which form the core zones of the biotope network. In addition, it became clear that there are many nature reserves along the Green Belt that are important for the biotope network.
In June 2003 the “Day of Biodiversity” took place at the Green Belt in cooperation with the magazine GEO . 500 experts mapped more than 5200 different animal and plant species in the Green Belt, including species that were already considered extinct.
For the 763 kilometer long section of the Green Belt in the Free State of Thuringia, there is a separate model for preservation and design.
The Federal Agency for Civic Education reported in 2013: The Green Belt has “an area of 17,656 hectares or almost 177 square kilometers. 60 percent of these are flowing or standing waters, extensively used grassland, fallow land or forests. [...] 85 percent of the area and 80 percent of the length are still close to nature. On the other hand, 15 percent of the area has been destroyed by arable land, intensive grassland / pasture or the construction of roads or industrial areas. To date, a total of 450 streets have crossed the Green Belt, and new ones are being added ”. Roads tending to increase in traffic are “often insurmountable for most animals. So old cracks have widened and new ones have been added. "
In the "Lenzen Declaration" of September 29, 2019, the BUND stated that in the previous 30 years "[r] and one eighth of the areas of the Green Belt [...] had been destroyed by intensive land use or development". This contradicts the "national [n] importance of the Green Belt as a central [n] component [s] of the transnational biotope network". In 2016, the BUND stated that Saxony-Anhalt was the state with the greatest interruptions; there, almost a third of the Green Belt has gaps.
In 2012, the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation started a project "Closing the gap in the Green Belt". The aim is to close gaps in the biotope network along the former inner-German border. The deficit areas that affect the network include, in particular, larger, intensively agricultural areas or valuable (open land) habitats growing with pioneer forest, as well as areas that are severely impaired by infrastructure measures. In the latter, it will not be possible to close the gap within the framework of this project, in the other areas this should be tried as a model. Bypass solutions are only provided in special exceptional cases, for example if the Green Belt is largely or completely destroyed over several kilometers and cannot be restored there. Then a new fallow and biotope area is to be created away from the historical course of the border, which causes fewer conflicts with intensive land use, but at the same time guarantees the functionality of the biotope network.
Prizes and awards
In 2017 the initiators Kai Frobel , Inge Sielmann and Hubert Weiger of the Green Belt were awarded the environmental prize of the German Federal Environmental Foundation.
2020 appeared Stamp Green Belt Germany , see Stamp Year 2020, the Federal Republic of Germany .
Public response
approval
In 2009, nature filmmaker Andreas Kieling hiked along the Green Belt and documented the country and people along the former border in the five-part TV series Mitten im wilden Deutschland (ZDF). The travel industry now offers touristic activities in connection with the Green Belt.
The aerial photograph archaeologist Klaus Leidorf has been documenting the Green Belt from a bird's eye view since the border was opened. His aerial photographs of the Green Belt can be seen in an exhibition in the House of the People in Probstzella .
The actor and comedian Michael Kessler came up with the idea in 2014 to drive along the Green Belt as the largest biotope network in Germany. Kessler drove a bright red tuk-tuk, an auto rickshaw with an electric motor, along the former border. Produced by RBB , the trip was broadcast as part of the Kessler's Expedition series, initially from October 3, 2014 as a two-part episode of 90 minutes on Das Erste , then in December 2014 in four episodes of 90 minutes on RBB television .
Parallel to the “Green Belt” project, the idea of a long-distance cycle route from the Barents Sea to the Black Sea was developed as part of the EuroVelo network. The long-distance cycle route EV 13 ( Iron Curtain Trail ) runs along the former inner-German border largely on the former Kolonnenweg. In 2019 the Iron Curtain Trail was certified as a cultural route by the Council of Europe .
criticism
Traffic planner
In a documentary “New construction of the A 73 between the Suhl motorway triangle and the Lichtenfels junction ”, the editors, the Bavarian autobahn directorate and the “Deutsche Einheit Fernstraßenplanungs- und -bau GmbH (DEGES)” stated with relief that the traffic planners had succeeded to remove the area for the Eisfeld- Süd junction from the “protected area backdrop” of the Green Belt so that the sweeping junction could be built directly on the Green Belt.
In the period from 1990 onwards, the connection of the previously separate parts of Germany by means of new or to be expanded traffic routes had priority among the decision-makers among the federal and state politicians. Politicians have only been emphasizing the urgency of closing the resulting gaps in the Green Belt since 2012.
Owners of private land on the border
At the public hearing on the draft law “Green Belt of Memory Saxony-Anhalt from the Death Strip to the Lifeline” in the Committee for Environment and Energy of the State Parliament of Saxony-Anhalt , representatives of the farmers 'and forest owners' associations in particular expressed criticism. You spoke on behalf of association members with private ownership of areas to be over-planned of "perceived expropriation ". Some saw the Green Belt as a new, different kind of separation between East and West. The CDU parliamentary group in the state parliament of Saxony-Anhalt made it clear in May 2019 that it attaches great importance to the fact that the application of the new state law must take place in agreement with the private owners of the land concerned.
Conservationists
The BUND Bayern strongly criticizes the current state of the Green Belt as it sees it. It is scandalous that the Green Belt, "[our] only national biotope network, highly regarded abroad, a unique landscape of memories of the German-German past [...]", "is practically unrecognizable over a length of 180 kilometers, marked by intensive agriculture" that "for animals and plants there is always the end of their hikes and that pedestrians and cyclists suddenly find themselves in the corn field".
The BUND also points out that parts of the Green Belt must be protected from being visited by people. There are areas in the Green Belt in which particularly protected animal species all occur at the same time. In these areas, increased tourist use - also as a hiking trail or as part of a “landscape-related quiet recreation” - would have severe negative consequences, up to and including the complete loss of the valuable species. In addition, some areas in the Green Belt are of high, in places even international, importance as resting or moulting areas for water birds, which would be impaired by increasing recreational use.
Philatelic
With the initial issue date March 2, 2020 was the German Post AG , a special stamp with the motif Green Belt Germany out. The design comes from the graphic designers Annette le Fort and André Heers from Kiel.
See also
literature
- North German Nature Conservation Academy (Ed.): Messages from the NNA . 5th year, issue 3, 1994 with the focus on nature conservation on the former inner-German border strip. Pp. 2-35. ISSN 0938-9903 .
- U. Harteisen, S. Neumeyer, S. Schlagbauer, K. Bizer, S. Hensel, L. Krüger: Green Belt - Model Region for Sustainability: Final Report of the Research Project. Universitätsverlag Göttingen, 2010, ISBN 978-3-941875-60-9 (open access version)
- Dieter Leupold: The Green Belt in Saxony-Anhalt: From the death strip to the lifeline. In: Sachsen-Anhalt-Journal. Volume 29, H. 4, 2019, pp. 11-12
Web links
- Heinz Sielmann Foundation: Green Belt Eichsfeld-Werratal
- BUND: Green belt
- Federal Agency for Nature Conservation: Inner German Green Belt
- Description from nature and monument protection point of view
- BUND: "Lenzen Declaration on the Green Belt". 29th September 2019
Individual evidence
- ^ Lower Saxony Ministry for the Environment, Energy, Building and Environmental Protection: A green belt in Lower Saxony . Retrieved March 8, 2020
- ↑ Federal Agency for Nature Conservation: Inner German Green Belt . Retrieved March 8, 2020
- ↑ Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety: The entire Green Belt should become a national natural monument . May 18, 2019, accessed March 8, 2020
- ↑ Tourist Association Mitzwitz and Surroundings e. V .: Lecture “30 Years of the Green Belt” . Retrieved March 8, 2020
- ↑ Green Belt Germany / BUND: How is history dealt with in the National Natural Monument? . Retrieved March 7, 2020
- ↑ BUND: A vision becomes reality - the green belt . Retrieved March 8, 2020
- ^ Michael Gorbachev: Lecture. In: "Perspectives of the Green Belt", BfN-Skripten 102nd Federal Agency for Nature Conservation, May 3, 2019, archived from the original on May 3, 2019 ; accessed on June 1, 2019 .
- ↑ "Green Belt Experience" in the Thuringian Forest / Thuringian Slate Mountains / Franconian Forest nature parks. Information on the test and development projects between Mitwitz and Mödlareuth in the years 2007 - 2010 . erlebnisgruenesband.de. Retrieved March 9, 2020
- ↑ Rebecca Plassa: 30 Years of the Green Belt - Perspectives for the Altmark. Event report . Heinrich Böll Foundation. July 29, 2019, accessed March 9, 2020
- ↑ Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN): Cross-linking habitats on the Green Belt . September 28, 2019, accessed March 9, 2020
- ↑ Nature and Landscape (magazine): 30 years of the Green Belt: Cross-linking with other biotope network axes and near-natural habitats . Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (ed.). September 30, 2019. Accessed March 9, 2020
- ↑ BUND circulars to the shareholders of the Green Belt
- ↑ Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN): Experience Green Belt . Retrieved March 7, 2020
- ↑ Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN): Experience Green Belt . Retrieved March 9, 2020
- ↑ Green Belt Germany / BUND: How is history dealt with in the National Natural Monument? . Retrieved March 7, 2020
- ↑ Rebecca Plassa: 30 Years of the Green Belt - Perspectives for the Altmark. Event report . Heinrich Böll Foundation. July 29, 2019, accessed March 9, 2020
- ↑ Federal Agency for Nature Conservation: Inventory of the Green Belt ( Memento from September 16, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Georg Baumert: The "Green Belt" - a living monument in Germany and Europe. bpb.de, July 8, 2013, accessed on February 28, 2020 .
- ↑ Green Belt Germany - Diversity on the running belt. bund.net, accessed on February 29, 2020 .
- ↑ BUND: 30 Years of the Green Belt - Connecting Landscapes & Tangible History. Nature Conservation Days on the Elbe 2019. "Lenzen Declaration on the Green Belt" September 29, 2019 . P. 1, accessed December 17, 2019
- ^ "Green belt" in the country interrupted in many places. welt.de, February 22, 2016, accessed on February 22, 2016 .
- ↑ Closing the gap in the Green Belt: Securing biological diversity through the further development of the Green Belt as the central axis of the national biotope network. bfn.de, 2012, accessed on February 28, 2020 .
- ↑ ( Page no longer available , search in web archives: Thuringians and Franconians are promoting the Green Belt together ), August 7, 2010
- ↑ The good view from above Klaus Leidorf observes the Green Belt of Germany ( Memento from February 12, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
- ↑ Life line of death strips, on probstzella.de
- ↑ On three wheels from Bavaria to the Baltic Sea , part 1, RBB online, accessed on August 10, 2016
- ↑ On three wheels from Bavaria to the Baltic Sea ( memento from August 29, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), part 2, RBB online, accessed on August 10, 2016
- ↑ Aerial photo of the Eisfeld-Süd junction on the A73 on the Green Belt . Verlag Nürnberg Luftbild Hajo Dietz Photography
- ↑ Bavarian autobahn directorate / "German Unity Fernstraßenplanungs- und -bau GmbH (DEGES)": Federal autobahn A 73 Suhl - Lichtenfels . 2008. P. 54 ff. (56 ff.), Accessed on March 7, 2020
- ↑ State Parliament of Saxony-Anhalt: Green Band Law discussed in a hearing . August 14, 2019, accessed February 28, 2020
- ↑ Green ribbon: CDU wants clarification for landowners . n-tv.de, May 22, 2019, accessed on February 28, 2020
- ↑ Bund Umwelt und Naturschutz (BUND) Bavaria: cuts into the green belt . Retrieved March 7, 2020
- ↑ BUND: guidelines for the Green Belt . February 2014. p. 63, accessed March 8, 2020