In March 2024, the GRÜNE LIGA submitted a position paper to the European Commission as part of the Commission’s public consultation on the Nitrates Directive (91/676/EEC). The GRÜNE LIGA strongly advocates for the European Commission to uphold the Nitrates Directive. This crucial piece of legislation is needed to protect European citizens, farmers, and economies from the harmful effects of nitrate pollution.

The intensification of agriculture, driven by unsustainable use of fertilisers, has led to widespread nutrient pollution, affecting over 30% of surface waters, 14% of groundwater, and 80% of marine waters in the EU. Livestock production contributes to more than 80% of nitrogen emissions in groundwater, in particular through the excessive use of nitrogen-based fertilisers for feed.

The Nitrates Directive aims to protect water quality across the EU by reducing water pollution caused by nitrates from agricultural sources and promoting the use of good agricultural practices.

Water law permit for Jänschwalde opencast mine expired at the turn of the year
Cottbus, 04.01.2023. The permit for the Jänschwalde open-cast mine to pump groundwater expired on 31.12.2022, but the open-cast mine will apparently continue to operate without a new permit. This creates facts in a legal vacuum, criticises the environmental network GRÜNE LIGA.

"Since 1996, all parties involved knew when the permit would expire, but a decision on the time after that has not been made until today. The coal company LEAG has delayed the procedure with late and incomplete applications and is not prevented by the mining authority from creating further facts. It is very difficult to believe in the rule of law here," says René Schuster of the GRÜNE LIGA.

Global warming and the associated longer dry periods and more frequent heavy rainfall events are having a noticeable impact on the water balance of lakes and wetlands in Germany and Europe. This leads to additional stress factors for aquatic ecosystems and their biodiversity and increasingly highlights conflicts in water use.

An ecological distopia and an outlook for all Europe ? The Greek Volvi Lake dried up completely in 2019.

Against this background, the current flash study "Lakes and Climate Change" highlights the available research findings on the impacts of climate change - and the associated changes in temperatures, precipitation amounts and distributions - on lakes, small water bodies and wetlands in Germany, also incorporating findings from other European countries.

BfN Schriften 624 - Blitzlichtstudie "Seen und Klimawandel"

Udo Gattenlöhner, Michael Bender und Marlene Bär Lamas

BfN-Schriften

2022

The long version of the study is available to download here (in German): www.grueneliga.de/images/Dokumente/Skript624.pdf

You can find a summary of the BfN Study here (English):

www.grueneliga.de/images/Dokumente/Wasser/EN_KLIMA_SEEN_SUM_22_04_27.pdf 

The publication “BREAK FREE – Restoring the biodiversity of rivers by removing dams” addresses the effects of barriers on migratory fish highlighting the worrying and catastrophic situation on the Mekong River (going across 5 countries in Asia) where the constructions of hydropower dams are putting not only the river and its components at risk but also all the already vulnerable populations depending on the Mekong River. The intensive use of water for agricultural irrigation can even lead to the complete drying out of the river bed as it is the case for the Colorado River. A number of dam construction projects are also on the table in the EU, including Northern Italy. On the other hand, there are striking examples of dam removals in the USA that show the efficiency of dam removals on biotopes and ecosystems restoration. In Europe such examples can also be found in France where 2 big dams are currently being removed at the Sélune River and in Finland where dam removal meanwhile is a more common practice.

According to the EU Biodiversity Strategy 2030 at least 25,000 km of rivers need to be restored into free-flowing rivers through the removal of primarily obsolete barriers and the restoration of floodplains and wetlands. The EU Commission released a guidance reporting one dam or weir every 1.5 km on European Rivers. Dams have different purposes, like hydropower or water supply, but many structures are ageing and some don’t fulfil their originally intended purpose, anymore. Whereas it is mandatory to consider the removal of ageing dams, severely impairing migratory fishes, the question of hydropower, especially in energy crises such as we live nowadays, must also be properly addressed. 

Authors: Athénaïs Georges and Michael Bender, with contributions provided by World Fish Migration Foundation, Free Rivers Italy, WWF Finland; David J. H. Blake, Herman Wanningen, Pao Fernandez Garrido and Elena Alfaya.

You can find the brochure here: https://grueneliga.de/images/Wasser/dam_removal_EBOOK.pdf

You can find the brochure in German here: www.grueneliga.de/images/Wasser/dam_removal_de_EBOOK.pdf

You can find the brochure in French here: https://grueneliga.de/images/Wasser/BREAK_FREE-FR.pdf 

The whole Interview of M Alban Thomas, Responsible of the Information System of the Sélune Project, is available here: Interview Sélune Project.

The present European Groundwater Memorandum formulates five key requirements for the protection of naturally formed groundwater resources and thus complements the European River Memorandum (ERM) aiming at the protection of the surface water bodies. Around 170 water suppliers, representing the water protection and drinking water interests of 188 million of people in the catchment areas of the rivers Rhine, Ruhr, Danube, Elbe, Meuse and Scheldt in 18 riparian states have collaborated. The five key requirements include:

• naturally available groundwater: sufficient quantities and good quality;
• the preservation of groundwater (from anthropogenic and geogenic pollution) as a precious common resource;
• the priority use must be given to public drinking water by binding legislation;
• a “zero-pollution” protection goal should be established with intervention values and intervention measures;
• the cooperation between the different stakeholders and users such as polluters, water suppliers, states and individuals: precautionary and polluter-pays principles; transparent and available data collection and monitoring.

You can find the entire Groundwater Memorandum following this link: (PDF 1,8 MB)

www.grueneliga.de/images/PDF-NewsletterENG/europeangroundwatermemorandum_2022_en.pdf