A man pauses on a pedestrian bridge as a German flag flies over the Reichstag building in Berlin on October 23, 2024. (Photo by John MACDOUGALL / AFP)
Berlin: A German environmental activist group said Wednesday it was taking the government to the country's highest court to force it to take more action to protect biodiversity at home and globally.
The German Federation for the Environment and Nature Conservation (BUND) charged that "the government is not doing enough to protect biodiversity", a day after submitting its complaint at the constitutional court.
"We are losing 150 species every day" while a third of species worldwide are at risk, said Myriam Rapior, the vice president of BUND, the German arm of the group Friends of the Earth.
The group said the rate at which fauna and flora species disappear today is "a hundred to a thousand times higher than the normal biological extinction rate", labelling it a problem that rivals the climate crisis.
It argued that the German government is obliged and treaty-bound to draw up a legally effective biodiversity protection policy that "secures our livelihoods for the future".
The biodiversity case is the latest in a series of lawsuits worldwide in recent years targeting governments and businesses with the aim of making them step up their efforts to protect the environment.
Several individuals have joined the lawsuit to demand that the government impose "measurable restrictions" on the cultivation of livestock and the use of pesticides, said Felix Ekardt, BUND's regional director in the state of Saxony.
