Country Comments

Germany is a leading industrial economy in western Europe with one of the highest GDP per capita income in the entire world. Germany is also the front-runner in adopting clean energy initiatives, e.g., renewable energy significantly increased from 6% in 2000 to 34% in 2016. Germany plans to expand this share by up to 95% until the year 2050. Such initiatives have drastically reduced air pollution in Germany. (1) It additionally has enacted more stringent regulations restricting the use of fertilizer, manure and insecticides to combat worsening water quality and insect loss from industrial agriculture operations.

Even with these efforts Germany is far from sustainable. It is highly reliant on massive imports of minerals, fuels, oils, petroleum and biomass products. Based on current consumption levels Germany needs to reduce its population by roughly 2/3 to approach sustainability.

Germany has had below replacement fertility rates for four decades averaging approximately 1.5 children per woman. The low fertility rate has concerned politicians fearing erroneously a slowing of its economy. As a result the country has both increased subsidies to families with children as well as made liberal immigration policies. The OECD ranks Germany with the highets number of immigrants since 2013 over any other country in the world, (2) which has been the driver of population growth, and continues to increase the country's overall environmental footprint further distancing itself from achieving long term sustainability.

(1) Bilal, Bashir, M.F., Benghoul, M. et al. Environmental pollution and COVID-19 outbreak: insights from Germany. Air Qual Atmos Health 13, 1385–1394 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11869-020-00893-9 (2) https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=MIG#