“Platzeck should keep promises”

 

Fed­er­al Envi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Trit­tin is right, the “Low­er Oder­tal” water strip pro­gram must final­ly be imple­ment­ed by the state of Bran­den­burg, the Bran­den­burg state gov­ern­ment still has a lot of home­work to do.

Fed­er­al Envi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Jür­gen Trit­tin right­ly urges the Bran­den­burg state gov­ern­ment to final­ly com­ply with the com­mit­ments made by the state of Bran­den­burg as part of the “Unteres Oder­tal” water­front project after a lead time of 13 years and to imple­ment the promised con­di­tions. Indeed, lit­tle has hap­pened here. The min­is­ters respon­si­ble in the past have crim­i­nal­ly neglect­ed the state’s nation­al park project and con­fined them­selves to hold­ing the asso­ci­a­tion respon­si­ble for the state government’s pre­vi­ous­ly failed nation­al park pol­i­cy. The dia­logue, which is offered and encour­aged by the friends’ asso­ci­a­tion, has been reg­u­lar­ly reject­ed since 1999. Such a pol­i­cy of refusal to talk leads to a dead end and an inabil­i­ty to act. Our offer to talk is still available.

Nev­er­the­less, the demands of Fed­er­al Envi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Trit­tin in Pots­dam should be tak­en seri­ous­ly. The home­work still to be done by no means only con­sists of the water study that has been out­stand­ing for years, but rather the ful­fill­ment of a whole series of promis­es that the State of Bran­den­burg made to the Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many in 1992 with the sig­na­ture of the then Green Envi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Platzeck. The most impor­tant of these are list­ed again below:

The quotes all come from the 1992 grant notice from the Bran­den­burg Ministry.

1. “The state gov­ern­ment under­takes to des­ig­nate half of the areas of the nation­al park as pro­tec­tion zone I in the core area by Decem­ber 31, 2010.” So far, how­ev­er, not 50%, but only 15% of the nation­al park area has been des­ig­nat­ed as a total reserve. The des­ig­na­tion of fur­ther areas is blocked in par­tic­u­lar by the Swedish mem­ber of the state par­lia­ment, Bischoff (SPD).

2. “Hunt­ing and fish­ing are to be stopped.” So far there is still a lack of a fish­ing con­cept that would stop fish­ing on at least 50% of the area, at least after a tran­si­tion period.

3. “In the core area, fish­ing is to be exclud­ed in future.” So far there is still no con­cept for anglers that excludes the use of angling on at least 50% of the area and lim­its the time and space in the rest of the nation­al park. A con­cept for fish­ing and angling was devel­oped by the nation­al park admin­is­tra­tion and repeat­ed­ly watered down in the search for com­pro­mis­es, but it is blocked by Bischoff in particular.

4. “The state has com­mit­ted itself to” large­ly reduc­ing the main­te­nance of the water bod­ies in the nation­al park and adapt­ing them to nature con­ser­va­tion goals. ” So far, how­ev­er, water man­age­ment in the nation­al park has been con­tin­ued as ever.

5. In addi­tion, the state has under­tak­en to des­ig­nate the entire core area as nature con­ser­va­tion areas and to con­vert the arable land into grass­land in the course of the project fund­ing. The entire south of the area has not yet been des­ig­nat­ed as a nation­al park or a nature reserve. The arable land there has not yet been con­vert­ed into grass­land, nor is it at least tem­porar­i­ly man­aged organ­i­cal­ly, as promised

Fur­ther exam­ples could be giv­en. The Bran­den­burg state gov­ern­ment still has a lot to do to meet the com­mit­ments made to the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment at the time. Con­tract loy­al­ty is part of the reli­a­bil­i­ty and pre­dictabil­i­ty of respon­si­ble state politics.