Protecting Nature

The EU has presented two pillars of its growth strategy this week, the new Biodiversity Strategy and the 'Farm to Fork' Strategy. De Volkskrant notes the increasing importance of large-scale restoration in the European Green Deal, that can bring about the return of lost species that are crucial to the ecosystem. Environmental organisations support the EU's plans and point out that climate change can only be countered by allowing nature to heal itself. Instead of relying on new technical methods, the removal of CO2 from the atmosphere should be supported through nature-based solutions. This approach requires the protection and restoration of ecosystems, such as forests or natural grasslands, which have the ability to store CO2 and can mitigate the negative effects of climate change. According to the article, nature solutions already absorb half of man-made emissions. De Volkskrant also points out that, although nature-based solutions offer the best results and are cost-effective, they do not have the same salience as technical solutions, which tend to produce a higher profit and are more popular with politicians and businesses. The article also presents six successful projects across Europe that aim to restore nature.

Deutsche Welle published an interview this week in its Polish language section with the German scientist and politician Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker. In the interview, Weizsäcker warns that we should not allow the pandemic to let us lose sight of our long-term environmental goals, as the climate crisis and the loss of biodiversity will have much more severe and far-reaching consequences than the virus. Even though he is optimistic that the coronavirus crisis has taught us to adapt our behaviour when facing immediate threats, he is afraid that the nature of our political systems leads us to neglect the bigger, less visible threats such as climate change. He also believes that the coronavirus crisis should encourage politicians to listen more to scientists when designing environmental policies. And while there is still too little media coverage on the protection of biodiversity, species and resources, he argues that journalists need to communicate to citizens that environmental crises, just like health crises, can turn our lives upside-down in the blink of an eye. 

On the occasion of World Bee Day this week, Repubblica writes about the indispensable role of bees in the preservation of biodiversity. The article reports that multiple bee species across the Italian peninsula are at risk of extinction, as the climate emergency, air pollution and intensive farming heavily impact the survival of these and many other insect species. With bees responsible for the pollination of most of the cultivated plants and for plant reproduction, the negative effects of human-induced environmental changes pose a threat to the conservation of biodiversity as well as the agricultural sector. Italian beekeepers have also been warning the EU that bees are producing less and less honey as ecosystems are increasingly destroyed. For this reason, the Italian environmental association Legambiente launched the campaign “Save the Queen”, calling on the European Commission to promote sustainable agricultural systems to protect biodiversity and limit the use of pesticides in farming.

Digi24 runs an article on the dry weather that is currently destroying crops especially in central and eastern Europe. Some parts of Romania and Poland are seeing the worst drought in the past 100 years, in the Czech Republic even in the last 500 years, according to the article. While the situation raises concerns over food security, the Czech President Milos Zeman claims that the current drought presents a bigger threat to the region than the pandemic. In Romania, the second largest exporter of wheat in the EU, the forecast shows that the harvest this year might be half its usual amount, leading to a ban on the export of wheat to non-EU destinations. The ban was lifted after a week but is likely to be reintroduced if the situation does not improve. Poland's grain yields are set to fall by more than 8% this year and the country has asked for bigger support for its agriculture via the EU budget. In addition, the Polish government is considering to raise food prices by 15%. The drought may lead to the deepest economic recession in the region since the fall of communism.