With the topic “Air Quality”, we place one of the greatest current sustainability challenges from the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) in the focus of this year’s DBU Summer Academy, which will take place from 11 to 13 September at the Kloster Volkenroda. The new edition of the German Sustainability Strategy from the federal government, released in 2016, begins with national implementation of the SDG. However, wishes and facts – or perhaps we should say objectives and reality – are still separated by a wide gap.
Air pollution in this country continues to represent one of the greatest environmental risks to health. It also affects ecosystems, and is a factor in climate change. Urbanization intensifies the problem. Following assessment of the preliminary measurement data from the federal states and the Federal Environmental Agency (UBA) from the previous year, the air in German cities was too highly polluted with nitrogen dioxide. At around 57 percent of the measurement stations in high-traffic areas, the threshold value of 40 micrograms per cubic meter (µg/m³) on annual average was exceeded.
