The Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture will invest 900 million euros in climate-adapted forest management over the next five years. The Budget Committee of the German Bundestag has now approved the corresponding funds. With the new program, forest managers are rewarded for additional climate and biodiversity protection, as stated in a statement from the ministry.
The Federal Minister of Food and Agriculture, Cem Özdemir, explains: “Our forests are suffering massively from the consequences of the climate crisis. They are patients whom we now have to help to get healthy again and, above all, to become resilient. With our funding program, we support forest owners to invest actively in climate protection and biodiversity and to make the forests crisis-proof. Only a healthy forest can reliably provide us with wood as a valuable, renewable and CO2-binding raw material, which we depend on, especially with regard to sustainable building.”
The new program is part of a forest support package. The implementation will start this year with the investment in climate-adapted forest management. Funding is given to those who manage their forest according to criteria above the legal requirements and above the standards of the forest certification systems – and thus strengthen the adaptation of their forest to climate change. For example, clear-cutting is prohibited, when new forests are established, predominantly native tree species must be planted, and large forests are given space for natural forest development.