environmental Protection

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In the Federal Republic of Germany and other industrialized countries, we now live in an environment largely designed by humans. Untouched nature can only be found in inaccessible extreme locations or in a few protected areas.

Over the centuries, humans have created a cultural landscape with a variety of new habitats - gardens, pastures, fields, hedges - in our originally primarily forested homeland. The range of species living here has also expanded.

Meanwhile, human activity is having the opposite effect. Cultural landscapes are being cleared out, their once diverse internal structure giving way to faceless monotony. Negative examples of this include agriculture and forestry with large-scale monocultures or water management with straightened river courses. People cut up habitats when they build new transport routes, or cut them down when cities eat into their surrounding areas.

Biodiversity is decreasing. Animal and plant species are becoming extinct because humans destroy their habitats, destroy their food sources or directly persecute them - for example through the use of pesticides in agriculture and forestry. Climate change is putting many species under additional pressure; On the other hand, the deforestation of virgin forests, for example, increases the greenhouse effect (see also Energy, Atmosphere, Climate Protection). Some of the threatened or extinct species we don't even know yet; We will sorely miss others - such as tuna, redfish or cod - because they provide food and livelihoods for many people.

These processes are irreversible - the extinction of a species cannot be reversed. They are also threatening because of their speed. Even before humans appeared, nature selected species and gave rise to new species. It's just that she took thousands and millions of years to do this. Soil as a living system can reform, but this occurs so slowly that it cannot reverse the human-induced degradation of the soil.

Nature conservation is therefore anything but a marginal issue for a small minority of romantic enthusiasts or backward-looking ideologues. The diversity of life forms on this earth is a basis (also) for our human life. Protecting this diversity (biodiversity) is one of the central tasks in the still young 21st century - similar to climate protection or overcoming at least the most depressing forms of poverty.

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