This is what it looks like when a forest with rare species is sacrificed. A woodland marked by the Norwegian Environment Agency as “very important”. The trees are being torn down, some of them hundreds of years old. This forest by the Trysfjorden in Agder had to give way to make way for the motorway. There are construction projects in such areas that several parties now want to ban. – news’s documentation hit me like a fist in the stomach. Now it must be prohibited to destroy valuable and vulnerable nature, says Arild Hermstad of the Green Party (MDG). Thousands of interventions On Saturday, news published a unique survey of natural destruction in Norway. With the help of artificial intelligence and satellite images, we found 44,000 interventions in nature in five years. But construction does not only take place in “ordinary” nature. The survey also shows thousands of interventions in various types of particularly important nature. news documented millions of square meters of lost nature in each of these nature types: marsh wild reindeer areas intervention-free nature beach zone the areas around rivers and streams selected and red-listed nature types, such as old forest All these are areas that three governments in a row have decided that the municipalities must be particularly careful about. Nevertheless, Norway sacrifices a total of two football pitches of this nature per day, the mapping shows. New E39 in SørlandetNew double track past EidsvollExpansion of Evenes airportFosen wind power plantNew double track for the Vestfold railwayNew E16 over SollihøgdaGrenlandsporten – Must put the foot down This cannot continue, several politicians believe after reading news’s case. – Now the state must go to the municipalities and say that it is not allowed to build in certain places, says Lars Haltbrekken, who sits on the energy and environment committee for the Socialist Left Party (SV). He mentions, among other things, bogs and old forests, in addition to the fact that they will ban all new cabin fields. MDG will also ban construction in a number of different valuable areas, according to news’s case. They list the beach zone, wild reindeer areas, conservation areas, valuable forests and marshes. – The municipality must retain its local self-government, but precisely in the particularly valuable areas the possibility must be restricted. There we have to put our foot down and say that we will never build anyway, says Arild Hermstad in MDG. LARGE AREAS: An excavator works. Close to here are valuable hollow oaks. Photo: Andrea Lyngholm / news Enormous land areas Such a ban would not be trivial. Several of the valuable nature types, for example bogs and the zone around streams and rivers, cover large areas of land in Norway. In some places it can be a question of significant shares of an entire municipality’s area. Nikolai Winge, expert in environmental law and general manager of Holth & Winge, questions whether a ban is the way to go. The expert points out that we have already had a national ban on building in the beach zone since 1954, and yet large parts of the beach zone have been built down, because the municipalities are constantly granting dispensations. – If you want an effective building ban in valuable nature, then the fight should be about how the exception provision should be designed and who should grant exceptions, he says. Winge points out that the authorities must instead be given clearer requirements to use the instruments they already have. – In addition, control must be tightened, so that the state steps down if certain municipalities do not have the ability or willingness to look after our most important natural areas. Demands that the government deliver a plan The expert believes that it is a long way to go before such a ban is adopted. At the same time, SV has already got through in budget negotiations that it will be prohibited to build on bogs. And now the Conservative Party is also opening up for stricter guidelines for the municipalities. The party is also positive about investigating a ban on the construction of bogs. – news’s case paints a gloomy picture. We now expect the government to return to Parliament as soon as possible with a plan to follow up on the international nature agreement, says environmental policy spokesperson in the Conservative Party, Mathilde Tybring-Gjedde. Calling for local democracy As Minister for Municipalities and Districts, Erling Sande from the Center Party is responsible for planning and construction matters in the government. Sande disagrees that the municipalities should be stripped of responsibility in spatial policy. – We have a lot of vulnerable land, and we have to take greater care of that. And then it is our local self-government that makes these decisions. – After seeing news’s case, do you think it is going in the right direction for nature? – In any case, I feel that the municipalities are very aware of this, says the minister and lists a number of important development measures that the municipalities are carrying out, such as hospitals and kindergartens. Instead of depriving the municipalities of their power, Sande wants to create better systems to give the municipalities advice and information before such decisions. He points out that not all the brains are in the state in Oslo. More about nature loss: Watch the TV series Oppsynsmannen: Bård is thrown on a journey in a country with forests that are not forests and fjords that are not fjords. Understand it whoever can.
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Will prohibit interventions in valuable nature – news Dokumentar
