Implementering af et Grønt Danmark - udtagning af lavbundsjorde

Abstract

This project focuses on the Green Tripartite Agreement (Den Grønne Trepartsaftale) and specifically targets the carbon-rich lowland soils, with the agreement aiming to take 140,000 hectares out of agricultural production by 2030. The aim of the preliminary analysis is to highlight how and with what intentions the Green Tripartite Agreement plans to execute the conversion of carbon-rich lowland soils. This is achieved by examining the previously established political agreements that laid the groundwork for the agreement, as well as the agreement’s intentions for the conversion and the stakeholders involved in the land conversion process. The preliminary analysis concludes with multiple issues regarding the Green Tripartite Agreements implimetation. The agreement contains multiple economical uncertainties for the landowners, which challenges the voluntary participation. Past experiences with delayed efforts raise doubts about the feasibility of the goal. Furthermore, environmental assessments play a central role but are time-consuming and risk slowing down green projects. The need for environmental assessments of green initiatives that already support the purpose of the law can be questioned, as the process is time-consuming. Environmental assessments therefore constitute a significant barrier to the implementation of the tripartite agreement and should be examined with a view to optimisation in order to promote efficient progress toward 2030. This sub-conclusion establishes the foundation for the research question, upon which the main analysis will be based. The main analysis refines the focus of the preliminary analysis by concentrating on carbon rich lowland soils and, specifically, environmental assessments, with particular emphasis on whether it is feasible to optimize the implementation phase in accordance with these environmental assessments. Building on this, the main analysis initialy focuses on the context, process, and regulation. The following chapter then presents an analytical review of selected professionals perspectives on environmental assessments, based on interviews, with the aim of shedding light on how such assessments are implemented in practice. Elements from both the preceding chapters are then integrated into a tentative, discussion-based evaluation to reflect on potential challenges and possibilities that could arise in the implementation of the Green Tripartite Agreement. The second to last chapter in the main analysis concludes with suggestions for possible opportunities for optimisation as well as a proposed solution offered with caution to hereby highlight possible aspects which could help achive the 2030 goal for the Green Tripartite Agreement. The project results in a conclusion that addresses the research question and synthesises the various perspectives presented throughout. In order to achieve the 2030 goal the official process for the conversion of carbon rich lowland soils, the process must be reevaluaded and changed to accomondate the increasing workload. The environmental assessment process must be shortend and hove more possibilities for decreasing the amount of analysis requried, in a way where only the most eccsential enviormental effects will be evaluated. Furthermore, projects with considerbly more possetive effects rather than negative, should be excused from this process entirely. Through this it will be concluded that these following solution can optimise the process; Overall, it is concluded that the following options may optimise the process: • Exemption from environmental assessment for nature projects with green climate objectives • A strategic environmental assessment of an overarching wetland plan, resulting in guiding delimitation notes to minimise the environmental assessment process for specific projects • Positive impacts considered in environmental screenings, so that cumulative effects are not necessarily assessed solely in a full environmental assessment • Optimisations of the staffing capacity for project processing The methods used in this project to elaborate and develop the different perspectives are exploratory literature reviews, legal method, and interviews. The literature review has primarily been used in the preliminary analysis to gain a deeper understanding of the subject and thereby identify and obtain an overview of knowledge relevant to the project. Interviews have been used in both the preliminary and main analysis. This was done to gain a deeper understanding of the planning and tools required to implement the Green Tripartite Agreement, as well as to expand our knowledge of the stakeholders involved in the implementation of the agreement. The reason for interviewing specialists in the main analysis was to gain a broad perspective on the ’issues’ that might arise with environmental assessments of carbon-rich lowland soils, why it was important to gain knowledge from different experts and practitioners. Lastly, the legal method is applied in the first chapter of the main analysis, which aims to establish an understanding of the current laws regarding environmental assessments in the conversion of lowland soils. Furthermore, legal method is also applied in the second chapter of the main analysis, where verdicts have been used to analyse legal precedence to gain a practical understanding of the use of environmental assessments. Overall, the goal of the project is to gain a perspective on environmental assessments and how their implementation contributes to the potential conversion of carbon-rich lowland soils, thereby removing them from agricultural production by 2030 through the Green Tripartite Agreement. Due to the enactment of the agreement in 2024, there is no recent research directly related to the issues highlighted in this project. Therefore, the results of the project can be used to clarify the issues that may arise during the implementation of the Green Tripartite Agreement regarding carbon-rich lowland soils.

A master thesis from Aalborg University

Implementering af et Grønt Danmark - udtagning af lavbundsjorde

[Implementation of a Green Denmark - removal of lowland soils]