• Title: The German National Strategy for Sustainable Development

• Speaker: Gila Altmann, Parliamentary State Secretary, Ministry of Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, Germany
• Location: Johannesburg

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Ladies and Gentleman,

coming from the Living Lakes Conference in Johannesburg and having seen the wonderful landscape of St. Lucia - a beauty as vulnerable and threatened as ever - I would like to start with a simple question of a simple politician, who is not a lawyer : What are laws and legislation for?First of all it is no end in itself. It is a prerequisite to organize our civil society and to serve and protect the people in their environment, in their every day life. I applies to conflicting interests and situations, especially when minority rights are affected.

Environmental law in special should govern the interaction of human systems and natural ecosystems. Given all the inter-related environmental, social and economic problems we face in all parts of the world, there has never been a more important time for clear, coherent and effective environmental law.

Agenda 21 has moved the debate away from purely environmental governance towards the more complete field of sustainable development. The field of environmental law has to move in the direction as well. We need a law of sustainable development that matches the problems we are facing and also the structures we are using to solve them.

On our way to the World Summit in Johannesburg, I am pleased to have this opportunity to present to you some of Germany experiences regarding the compliance and enforcement of environmental law and environmental policy strategies.

By far the larger part of German environmental law is shaped by European Community directives. Community legislation in the environmental sector is particularly intensive, as the EC has extensive powers in this field - and uses them.

As a rule today international environmental agreements also have to be implemented through an EC directive, which in turn must then be transposed into the national law of the Member States. In the past, Germany has often found it difficult to meet the generally tight deadlines for transposition, a situation arising in part from the complex separation of legislative powers within Germany's federal structure.

Germany is a federation consisting of 16 federal Länder. Germany's Basic Law and the authority to enact laws is divided between the Federation and the Länder.

The Federal Government is first of all responsible for the framework legislation, the Länder subsequently have to adopt specifying acts and implement them, e.g. in sectors of water management and nature conservation. In some other sectors of environmental law (e.g. immission control, waste law, nuclear power plants), the Federation can pass final regulations in the national interest.

Disadvantages of this system are, that it is very time-consuming and that it can also lead to the non-uniform regulation of certain issues within Germany. The difficulties have given rise to the current discussion on redistributing the legislative powers of the Federation and Länder for the environmental sector.

Besides the classic environmental legislation and the transposition of European legal acts into national law, national strategies and programs become of growing importance for a modern environmental policy. I would like to illustrate this with an example:

Agenda 21 requires all Governments to produce a national sustainable plan.The German National Strategy for Sustainable Development is one of our contributions to the World Summit in Johannesburg. The aim of the strategy is to make clear the direction our country should be taking in order to achieve an economically competitive, socially fair and ecologically sound development - that means a sustainable development.

The strategy was developed by a "Committee of State Secretaries for Sustainable Development". It has a core membership of ten ministries and is chaired by the State Minister at the Federal Chancellery. The Committee is also responsible for the regular monitoring and further development of the strategy in a long-term process.

The Government was and will be further supported by the "Council for Sustainable Development", which was set up by the Chancellor to advise the Government in this process. The Council consists of 16 members representing major groups of society, e.g. industry, NGOs, church, science. They drafted comprehensive recommendations for this strategy.

The development of the strategy was accompanied by a broad dialogue in which all major groups as well as citizens were able to put forward their ideas and proposals.

The Federal Government encourages all social groups to take an active part in the implementation of the goals and measures of the strategy. With the help of 21 goals and key indicators the Government will show where we are on the road to sustainable development, what progress has been made and where further actions are needed.

The key indicators are and must be linked to concrete - and where useful and feasible - to quantitative goals, like inter alia:

• Doubling energy and resource productivity by 2020 compared to 1990 and 1994 levels respectively
• Increasing the share of renewable energies in primary energy consumption to 4.2% and in electricity consumption to 12.5% by 2010 as compared to 2000; increasing the share to around half of energy consumption by 2050
• Reducing the daily increase of land use for housing and transport infrastructure from the current rate of 129 hectares to 30 hectares by 2020.

The Federal Government translated these strategic goals and targets into concrete policy and outlined eight areas of action necessary for achieving sustainable development in Germany, for example:

• Climate protection and energy policy,
• Environmentally sound mobility,
• Agriculture and consumer protection,
• Taking international responsibility - an overarching theme of the strategy.

In order to demonstrate the ongoing implementation, the Federal Government set out concrete pilot projects, which show the innovation potential for sustainable development. Thus, for example, the way has been paved for large offshore wind parks in the North Sea and the Baltic Sea, the reorientation of agricultural policy which is taking shape in model regions and for fuel cells which produce electricity and heat from hydrogen.

Involving civil society is of particular importance. In Germany recognized NGOs have opportunities to participate in the decision-making process and are given financial support. Of course, NGOs can and have to be thorn in the side. And the common debate over the best environmental solution usually produces an optimal result, though I have to confess, that sometimes the government has to tackle with uncomfortable debates in the forefront.

In this context, the Aarhus Convention referring to the UN-ECE Convention on the Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters is particularly and increasingly significant. The recently adopted federal act on nature Conservation does take this into account by giving the right to NGOs of filing a case at court even when they are not directly involved.

Improvements in environmental protection will not only be achieved by introducing more stringent technical standards and limit values, but also through transparency and participation rights for the public within the procedure. Involving the public in these processes leads to a broadening of the foundations for decision-making and to avoidance of errors and can save a lot of time.

The decisions themselves gain in quality, acceptance and legitimation. The new federal Act on nature conservation was also modernized in terms of introducing the precautionary principle. The technical progress appears to be unlimited. Therefore we have to check the risks and impact of new technologies and activities before they are started.

A new strategy in modern environmental policy in Germany is cooperation with industry in order to put through environmental objectives, as we did in terms of the new direction in energy policy and the development of a future-oriented and environmentally sound energy supply.

The phase-out of nuclear power adopted by Germany has generated investments in modern efficiency technologies, such as combined heat and power and the utilisation of renewable energies.

The move is also important from an employment angle. For example, expanding the share of renewable energies on the market enabled Germany to secure or create over 100 000 jobs, 35 000 of these in the wind energy sector (in 2002 around 10.000 megawatts) alone. So Germany has become a world leader in the generation of energy from wind utilisation.

The German government's decision to phase-out the commercial use of nuclear power in consensus with the industry arose from a reassessment of the risks this technology poses, the immense unsolved problems with nuclear waste and because it prevents internalizing the external costs.

The decision to phase out nuclear power plants means in about 20 years the last nuclear power plant will be switched off.

This agreement between industry and government is not a contract in a legally binding sense. It was created, due to the fact that a consensus agreement on the phase-out of nuclear power is more advantageous than a disputed legal decision because it perverts playing political games with changing majorities. And/ from the economic perspective this is a basis for long term investment decisions for environmental friendly energy supply.

This new energy policy was also introduced to enable Germany to make an important contribution to climate protection and to meet the targets of the Kyoto Protocol. In the framework of the EU burden sharing, Germany committed itself to a 21% reduction. Only 2% now separates the Federal Republic from its reduction target.

The Federal Government created a realistic basis for fulfilling its climate protection objectives with a climate protection program, which contains both regulatory requirements and economic incentives as well as companying measures such as information and consultation, training and further training.

As new elements there are fixed sectoral potentials of minimizing CO2 missions for the transport sector, private households and industry. Such an objective can only be achieved if all levels of trade and industry and society play a part.

Besides the climate protection program of the Federal Government, all the German Länder and more than 1000 local authorities have now developed their own climate protection programs. Trade and industry and other social groups have likewise developed strategies and concepts which they are currently implementing.

The bundle of measures in the framework of the climate protection program includes in particular the so-called "ecological tax reform". We have started to adapt our taxation system and promotion programs to our new energy policy to give more momentum to the process.

In the buildings sector we have issued an Energy Saving Ordinance and set up a funding program for CO2 reduction and support for combined heat and power plants and gas steam power plants. A promotion act and additional assistance programs have triggered a veritable boom for renewable energies in Germany.

And finally, in the traffic and transport sector, I would like to draw attention to the introduction of the distance-related motorway user charge for heavy lorries, the support for the market introduction of energy efficient and low-consumption passenger vehicles, the promotion of low-sulphur and sulphur free fuels and additional investment in the railway infrastructure.

What difference has Agenda 21 made to environmental law? Agenda 21 requires a much greater degree of regulation of activity and coordination between all types and all levels of stakeholders. To ensure coherence between international, national, regional and local levels of governance, we need a common set of legal principles.

That means also that all lawyers have to include the broader perspective .I am glad that in this conference there are a lot of lawyers ready for this.

You have heard how Germany has established the National Sustainable Development strategy to implement environmental improvements. We are just at the beginning.

The protection and improvement of the environment will continue to demand major efforts. It is a question of combining environmental policy strategies with effective legal and institutional instruments. In view of the global character of environmental problems, experience exchange and cooperation are indispensable for achieving progress in this field.

National approaches for action can only succeed against a background of international cooperation and connection.

Thank you.