Federal Ministry for the Environment, Climate Action, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety

The ministry was established on 6 June 1986 in response to the Chernobyl disaster. The then Federal Government wanted to combine environmental authority under a new minister in order to face new environmental challenges more effectively. Furthermore The Greens had been formed a few years prior in part as an anti-nuclear environmentalist party and had achieved federal representation in 1983 and Joschka Fischer had been appointed minister of the environment for Hesse the previous year, marking the first state level red-green coalition in Germany. Thus the CDU/CSU intended to project a message of taking the environment seriously in an era in which the Greens were widely perceived as the only party with a policy focus on environmental issues, notwithstanding the fact that CSU-led Bavaria had had a state environment minister since 1971 and the FDP was the first to pass an environment-related plank in the party platform in 1971. Prior to the establishment of the ministry of the environment, responsibilities for environmental issues were distributed among the ministries of the Interior, Agriculture and Health.

Functions

The ministry's primary functions include:

• Fundamental national environmental policy
• Informing and educating the public about environmental issues
• Environmental remediation and development in Eastern Germany
• Climate protection and energy
• Air quality control
• Noise abatement
• Conservation of groundwater, rivers, lakes and seas
• Soil conservation and remediation of contaminated sites
• Waste management and recycling policy
• Chemicals safety, environment and health
• Precautions against emergencies in industrial plants
• Protection, maintenance and sustainable utilization of biodiversity
• Safety of nuclear facilities
• Nuclear supply and disposal
• Radiological protection