CDU on the environment and animal welfare

The CDU wants to preserve green spaces and protected areas, allow new paving-over of land only as an exception, and reopen sealed surfaces. According to the platform, trees, nature-oriented schoolyards and allotment gardens are meant to cool the city and secure quality of life.

The CDU wants to protect green spaces in Hamburg. Ground should only rarely be paved over. Paved areas should be opened up again. The city should replace street trees that were cut down. Allotment gardens should be safe until 2040.

For the CDU, nature and landscape reserves are not building land, which a new land-use plan is to reflect. An unsealing program is to make ground absorb water again and protect cool-air corridors. A replanting drive is planned for street trees that were felled and never replaced, along with more money for care and watering. Schoolyards are to be redesigned in a natural way, with infiltration areas and native plants. A plan is to secure existing allotment gardens until 2040 and be reviewed every ten years. Hamburg is also meant to become the German city of over a million people with the cleanest air.

The CDU wants to place at least one-fifth of Hamburg's forest under protection and to secure peatlands through protective measures and land purchases. It justifies this with the decline in biodiversity and the role of forests and peatlands in climate protection.

Hamburg has fewer and fewer kinds of animals and plants. So the CDU wants to protect more forest. At least 20 percent of the forest should be protected. The city should also buy and protect peatland.

The platform describes insects, birds and small mammals finding less and less habitat in Hamburg. Old trees, old-growth stands and deadwood are to be kept so forests can better withstand climate change. According to the platform, more than a quarter of the peatlands are in poor condition, and money for buying peatland has gone unused. The CDU therefore wants to buy additional land in a targeted way.

The CDU wants to expand animal welfare in Hamburg through several individual measures, including a new animal shelter and a station for wild animals. Animal cruelty is to be pursued consistently.

The CDU wants to protect animals better. Hamburg should get a new animal shelter. There should also be a station for wild animals. Dogs should get more areas to run. People who are cruel to animals should be pursued.

Plans include an ordinance to protect cats, a plan for managing city pigeons, and additional off-leash areas for dogs. The dog law is to be revised. Animal welfare organizations are to receive support, and farming is to become more animal-friendly. For details, the platform points to the party's separate animal welfare plan.