CDU/CSU on the environment and animal welfare

The CDU and the CSU want to protect endangered species and their habitats, rewet peatlands, and keep seas and inland waters clean. They rely on cooperation with owners and users and on a circular economy.

The CDU and the CSU want to protect endangered animals and plants. Peatlands should become wet again, because they store CO2. Seas and rivers should stay clean. More waste should be recycled. Those who badly harm the environment should be punished.

Protected areas are to be improved in quality and better connected, and protection rules reviewed regularly. For peatlands, incentives for rewetting are planned together with landowners. For the seas, the focus is on further developed protection agreements, less pollution and old munitions in the North Sea and Baltic Sea, alongside use for transport, energy, the military and fishing. Waters are to be kept clean under the polluter-pays principle, and soil sealing reduced. For recycling, the parties want to remove legal hurdles. Pollution, illegal animal trade and cruelty to animals are to be punished consistently.

The CDU and the CSU want to introduce nationwide mandatory insurance against natural hazard damage because extreme weather is increasing. This is meant to distribute the burden fairly in the interest of taxpayers. Coastal and flood protection are to take priority.

There are more and more storms and floods. So the CDU and the CSU want mandatory insurance. It pays for damage caused by nature. Then taxpayers do not have to cover the damage. Protection against floods should be especially important.

The insurance requirement is to apply everywhere in Germany and serve as financial provision. Coastal and flood protection are a priority for the parties in order to protect people in areas at risk. For such protective measures, the obligation to provide ecological compensation is to be dropped.

The CDU and the CSU reject a general ban on PFAS chemicals where the substances cannot currently be replaced. Instead, they want to assess risks case by case and invest in research on substitutes.

PFAS are chemicals that stay in the environment for a very long time. The CDU and the CSU do not want to ban all of them. Some of these substances cannot be replaced today. The parties want to check each risk on its own. Researchers should find substitutes.

The parties want to protect health and the environment while ensuring that necessary chemicals remain available. A risk-based approach is to apply. This concerns substances that, in their view, are essential for health, public services and the economy. Money is to go into research on substitutes and closed material loops.

The CDU and the CSU want to actively manage the wolf population and allow wolves to be hunted, with rules varying by region. To do so, the wolf's protected status would be changed. The stated goal is to better protect grazing animals.

Wolves sometimes kill sheep and other animals in the fields. So the CDU and the CSU want to allow hunting of wolves. The rules can differ from region to region. To do this, they want to change how wolves are protected.

The wolf would be added to the Federal Hunting Act and its protected status adjusted. As a basis, the rule from the EU Habitats Directive would be carried over into the Federal Nature Conservation Act. The parties want similar rules for other species that they consider no longer endangered, such as rooks and cormorants.