Anyone who gets beaten up notices it. On the other hand, those who fall ill because drinking water has been poisoned by insecticides often have no idea that they have been the victim of a crime. Because environmental crime often causes damage without being noticed. According to the Federal Environment Agency, up to 90 percent of crimes are never discovered. According to the Association of German Criminal Investigators (BDK), environmental crime is a “huge, unexplored swamp”.
Black-Green wants to dry up in NRW. The state government is planning a major attack, primarily on illegal waste disposal companies and dealers, whose waste and sewage first poison the soil and water, then humans and animals. According to the coalition agreement, the Greens and CDU want to attack environmental criminals in three ways: through a public prosecutor’s office, a coordination center at the LKA and 200 additional employees per year in the environmental administration, who are primarily supposed to monitor environmental protection standards. However, this offensive has an unpleasant side effect for the CDU: it shows how vulnerable its previous handling of environmental crime was.
According to the Green-led Ministry of Justice, the past shows “that the effective prosecution of environmental crime requires special expertise, special skills and sufficient human resources”. NRW has to work on all of this. This fits in with what Greens and conservationists have been criticizing for years in the case of major environmental scandals: investigators, district governments and state authorities often not only lack the competence, but sometimes also the will to stand up to polluters. Greens and associations such as the “Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz in Deutschland” (BUND) have therefore filed complaints against authorities and public prosecutors on several occasions.
This is also the case today: after an explosion in Currenta’s hazardous waste facility in Leverkusen, not only seven people died a year ago; millions of liters of fire-fighting water containing highly toxic chemicals such as clothianidin were also dumped into the Rhine. According to the EU food authority EFSA, it damages the nervous system, learning and memory functions of the brain. The waterworks in the Netherlands, which extract drinking water from the Rhine, grumbled that the poison should never have been pumped into the Rhine. And the BUND now reported Currenta. He also filed a complaint against the district government of Cologne: As a supervisory authority, it should have intervened. On top of that, the BUND attacked the CDU environment minister at the time, saying that she had “apparently claimed against her better judgment that there had been no discharge into the Rhine”. The question is “whether the public was misled about the extent of the disaster”.
And so environmentalists have often diagnosed alleged alliances between polluters and government agencies. The new Environment Minister Oliver Krischer (Greens) does not put it so drastically. But he also stated to the WELT: “With better government monitoring of environmental standards, there would be a high probability that disasters such as the poisoning of employees at Envio, the massive oil spill at Shell or possible failures at Currenta would have been uncovered more quickly.”
Dirk Jansen, NRW Managing Director of the BUND, also demands that “self-confident investigative and prosecuting authorities who do their job regardless of the general political climate” are needed from now on. This is also aimed at the coalition of CDU and FDP that will govern until 2022: As one of the first measures, the then CDU environment minister eliminated the so-called environmental crime department. This mobile research unit tracked down large-scale violations of environmental protection and animal welfare. The unit was able to research freely and help clear up scandals, for which it was praised across Europe.
The dissolution of this position without replacement changed the political climate – so complained the SPD, Greens and associations. It was understood by many as a warning from the state government not to devote too much energy to the fight against environmental criminals.
This is one of the reasons why the opposition has doubts about the announced turnaround. The longtime head of the Association of German Criminal Police Officers and today’s SPD crime expert Sebastian Fiedler told this newspaper that the dissolution of this position and “the disastrous staffing of prosecutors in the area” speak “a clear language”. After five years of black and yellow, there are only “very few well-trained investigators specializing in environmental crime at the Kripo. The training programs have been cut. In the meantime, the water protection police responsible for environmental crime even lacked the equipment to secure evidence and take samples,” lists expert Fiedler. It is also a sign of “half-heartedness that only one special public prosecutor’s office should be set up”. Four each were created for white-collar crime and corruption.
For the SPD, it is clear that the CDU simply does not show as much interest in environmental criminals as it should. However, the Green Environment Minister Krischer contradicts this: “The CDU is also fully aware that more needs to be done than has been done in the past in the fight against environmental crime. In the analysis that a change of course is necessary, there is agreement in the coalition,” said Krischer.
The Green Minister of Justice, Benjamin Limbach, also asserted to this newspaper that the Green ministries were already in exchange “at the working level”, a few weeks after taking office, with the house of CDU Interior Minister Reul. After the summer break, according to Limbach, he himself will “get in touch with my cabinet colleagues Herbert Reul and Oliver Krischer”.
But even if the Union were to view the fight against environmental offenders less passionately than against other criminals, there is an argument that should mobilize CDU domestic politicians: As the “third largest phenomenon of organized crime worldwide”, environmental crime, such as the illegal trade in toxic waste, According to Fiedler, it is the “biggest source of income for non-governmental, armed groups and terrorist organizations”.
2500 environmental crimes – that’s how many violations of federal and state environmental protection laws there were in North Rhine-Westphalia in 2021. Illegal waste disposal accounts for the majority of crimes. These are mostly easily identifiable cases of ordinary garbage being left in nature. According to the Federal Environment Agency, the number of unreported cases is high in more serious cases, for example in which toxic substances get into the soil or water.