Havelberg, Woerlitz Out of the government district in Berlin, into nature in Brandenburg and Saxony-Anhalt: This is where Steffi Lemke (Greens) is drawn to. The Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection is on her first summer trip as Minister – in the middle of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, in what is probably Germany’s worst energy crisis.
She also pays a short visit to Ramona Pop. She is the top consumer advocate and a Green party colleague who, because of rising energy prices, would like the traffic light government to pass a law suspending energy cuts in the event of late payments. She is also asking for more financial help.
In the coming weeks, consumer protection will demand Lemke’s attention. But on her summer trip she first travels to Havelberg, in the “Lower Havel lowlands”. The area is considered to be the largest contiguous wetland inland in western Central Europe.
The Havel is being renatured with financial help from the federal government as well as from Brandenburg and Saxony-Anhalt. Meadows are waterlogged again, old branches of the river are reconnected to the main stream. Leif Müller and Rocco Buchta from the German Nature Conservation Union accompany them on the water in a boat. First it works to the damp meadows: Every step is a blessing given the current drought in the country.
The Havel here in the border area of Brandenburg and Saxony-Anhalt is blessed with water thanks to years of efforts to improve ecological conditions. Lemke, Müller and Buchta have known each other for a long time, they are on first-name terms. The ground is soft, “but you don’t have to be afraid of sinking in,” says Nabu Federal Managing Director Müller to Lemke.
The renaturation of a federal waterway is of exemplary and supra-regional importance in Germany, writes the Federal Ministry for the Environment.
(Photo: BMUV/Sascha Hilgers)
Environmental policy is a subject close to her heart, and she knows her way around here. Consumer protection, on the other hand, is new to them. She only warms up to him bit by bit, even if Lemke emphasizes that consumer protection “is in good hands in the Ministry of the Environment”.
Lemke: The will to stop environmental disasters
The 54-year-old was born and grew up on the Elbe, “at the time one of the dirtiest rivers in Europe,” as she writes on her website. “Nevertheless, the fascinating river landscape left a deep impression on me, as did the will to stop this and other environmental disasters.” Before Lemke became a politician, the Dessau native trained as a zoo technician and later studied agricultural sciences in Berlin.
In 1990 she was a founding member of the Green Party in East Germany. In 1994 she was elected to the Bundestag for the first time. Between 2002 and 2013 she was the federal secretary of the Greens. In 2013 she became a member of parliament again and spokeswoman for nature conservation issues for the Greens in the Bundestag.
In contrast to Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and Economics Minister Robert Habeck, Lemke is less drawn to the public. She is much less well known, which is not only due to her subjects. “Steffi”, as Müller and Buchta call her, is unpretentious and prefers to weigh her words three times rather than once. Working quietly suits her better than making headlines quickly.
>> Read here: Environment Minister Lemke hesitates when it comes to hydrogen – to the displeasure of her own party
However, she wants to use her first summer trip as minister to bring her issues closer to the public. The issues that are not debated every day but will be vital in the future. She is glad that she is accompanying so many on her summer trip, says Lemke. So everyone would notice: “It’s no fuss.”
Natural climate protection are keywords that the rather reserved minister thrives on. rewetting bogs; renaturing floodplains; Preserve and protect forests, soil, bodies of water and seas. “In this way we secure our natural and economic livelihoods and increase their resilience to the consequences of the climate crisis such as drought or flooding,” says Lemke.
Visit to an endangered species of mammal – the European hamster
Next Wednesday she will present the “Natural Climate Protection” action program, for which Germany wants to make more money available than ever. By 2026, four billion euros will flow into the strengthening of ecosystems or their restoration – a chunk of money.
Hohe Börde in Saxony-Anhalt: Steffi Lemke is standing on a harvested field on which the stubble was left to protect the field hamster.
(Photo: dpa)
She also wants to raise public awareness of the issue of species protection. So she drives from Havelberg to Feldhamsterland in the Magdeburg Börde. On a freshly harvested rye field, employees of the German Wildlife Foundation tell you something about the field hamster, as does farmer Helmar Johns, on whose fields several specimens of the small rodent live.
The field hamster suffers from increasingly intensive agriculture and the use of pesticides. It is now one of the most threatened mammal species in Germany. Until the 1990s, hamsters were considered crop pests. They were caught and also killed for the then thriving fur trade.
In order to protect the hamster and stop the drastic decline in the population, there has been a rescue project funded by the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation since 2018. But the project will end in 2023 and no decision has yet been made about whether it will continue. The German Wildlife Foundation calls for a national species aid program for the hamster, but Lemke promises nothing.
>> Read here: Less concrete, more meadows: what protection against flooding and drought can look like
She drives on to visit a so-called field hamster mother cell owned by the farmer Kay Brüggemann. Field hamster mother cells are areas of 50 by 50 meters on formerly agricultural fields, fenced in to protect against enemies of the hamster. Existing populations can be strengthened in this way.
Solar energy systems between wild plants
Then on to the Middle Elbe Biosphere Reserve. The minister travels almost restlessly for the issues that are close to her heart, which she takes care of despite multiple crises. Rivers, she says, must retain their natural space or be given back in a planned manner.
Otherwise the rivers will take the space for themselves – with effects such as the flood disaster in 2021 in the Ahr valley. Prevention and adaptation to climate change are therefore the priorities of this legislative period in the Ministry of the Environment.
Unlike the Rhine, the Elbe still has a largely typical floodplain landscape here in the biosphere reserve. Like many others, the region is suffering from severe drought. For nine years the floodplains were no longer under water, and the trees have long since withered, especially the ash trees.
For Lemke, the hours in her home country also offer an opportunity to take a deep breath. Because on Sunday she is on her way to the German-Polish environmental council, which is about the fish kill in the Oder and the ongoing research into the causes of the environmental disaster. The closed conference of the Federal Cabinet in Meseberg is also pending.
But before that, this Friday, Lemke is traveling to the former Goitzsche opencast mining area and to a research project on the environmentally friendly expansion of solar energy on a former ash depot. Six model solar systems are tested here in the midst of various wild plant mixtures.
More: Fish deaths in the Oder: Poisonous “golden algae” are said to be responsible.