Fight against species extinction and climate change: This year, the German Federal Environment Foundation is honoring two people who have made the general public aware of important principles.
Osnabrück / Greifswald / Frankfurt / Main – The German Environment Prize this year honors two researchers for their commitment to species and climate protection.
The prize, endowed with 500,000 euros, is shared by the Frankfurt scientist Katrin Böhning-Gaese for her findings on biological diversity and its value for man and the earth, and the Greifswald moor researcher Hans Joosten. The Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt (DBU) announced on Friday in Osnabrück that his merits lie in his decades of research into the importance of moors for climate protection. The German Environment Prize, one of the most valuable environmental awards in Europe, will be presented on October 10 in Darmstadt by Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
With the award, the Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt wants to send a signal that there is only one earth and that humanity must be careful with the diversity of life, said DBU General Secretary Alexander Bonde. The research work by Böhning-Gaese has shown the dramatic consequences of the loss of species for humans and the entire planet.
Katrin Böhning-Gaese investigates ecological relationships locally, regionally, continentally and globally as well as in different time scales. The director of the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Center in Frankfurt endeavors to predict environmental changes in ecosystems in the next few decades as precisely as possible, said Bonde: “Only if we recognize and understand the processes can we take targeted measures to stop them. “The scientist also played a key role in laying the foundations for the recommendations of the Agriculture Commission for the Future of Agriculture in Germany.
With his work, peat researcher Joosten has awakened the awareness that peatlands are indispensable for overcoming the climate crisis. “And if we do not pay attention to the moors, if we do not protect them from drainage, then climate change will cause us even greater problems in the future than we are already feeling,” said DBU boss Bonde.
Joosten came to the Institute for Botany and Landscape Ecology at the University of Greifswald in 1996 after studying biology and doing various scientific positions in the Netherlands. He worked there until he retired. In more than 600 scientific publications he has dealt with the moor as a habitat all over the world and has also undertaken many research trips to moor areas from Alaska to North Korea. Joosten made a decisive contribution to the fact that moors are now regarded as important landscape types and as important for the climate, Bonde praised. One fifth of the moors around the world are drained, in Germany as much as 95 percent, which drives up greenhouse gas emissions. The rewetting and restoration of the moors are crucial in order to naturally bind the greenhouse gas CO2.
Joosten also coined the term “paludiculture”, the environmentally friendly use of moors. According to the DBU, this could revolutionize horticulture: peat moss cultivation as a substitute for fossil peat. dpa
