Thirtieth anniversary of LIFE

The Euro­pean Union is cel­e­brat­ing a spe­cial anniver­sary these days: on May 21, it will mark the thir­ti­eth anniver­sary of LIFE (“L’In­stru­ment Financier pour l’En­vi­ron­nement”), its pro­gram for financ­ing nature and envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion mea­sures in the EU and select­ed can­di­date, acces­sion and neigh­bor­ing countries.

A shared success story

The Glob­al Nature Fund (GNF), which imple­ments projects and ini­tia­tives for peo­ple, water and nature world­wide from Radolfzell on Lake Con­stance, now has a twen­ty-year his­to­ry with the EU fund­ing instru­ment. Since the first LIFE sup­port­ed project “Liv­ing Lakes: Sus­tain­able Man­age­ment of Wet­lands and Shal­low Lakes”, with which the GNF start­ed in 2002 to pro­mote the con­ser­va­tion of pre­cious Euro­pean water ecosys­tems, it has suc­cess­ful­ly imple­ment­ed or is still active in sev­en oth­er projects with fund­ing from LIFE.

“It is no exag­ger­a­tion to say that the projects fund­ed by the LIFE pro­gram go some way to defin­ing who we are today. With its sup­port, the EU has accom­pa­nied us on our way to becom­ing a pio­neer in inter­na­tion­al lake and wet­land con­ser­va­tion. And not only that: since the launch of the LIFE Euro­pean Busi­ness & Bio­di­ver­si­ty Cam­paign in 2010, at that time some­thing com­plete­ly new, we have been able to raise aware­ness of the impor­tance of bio­di­ver­si­ty in many com­pa­nies in a sus­tain­able way. Today, this makes us an equal­ly sought-after part­ner for com­pa­nies look­ing for the right woody plants for bio­di­ver­si­ty-friend­ly plant­i­ng at their head­quar­ters, for exam­ple, and those want­i­ng to orga­nize their sup­ply chains in a defor­esta­tion-free way.”

- Dr. Thomas Schae­fer, Head of Con­ser­va­tion & Liv­ing Lakes Departments

Diverse projects for biodiversity and healthy waters

GNF’s LIFE-fund­ed projects are diverse, and coop­er­a­tion has inten­si­fied in recent years. Most recent­ly, “LIFE Boost­ing Green Infra­struc­ture through Bio­di­ver­si­ty-Ori­ent­ed Design of Busi­ness Premises”(short “Boo­GI-BOP”) for green busi­ness premis­es start­ed in 2018, “LIFE Blue Lakes” for microplas­tic-free Euro­pean inland waters in 2019 and “LIFE Insect Sup­port­ive Regions” for the pro­tec­tion of insects and bio­di­ver­si­ty on land­scape lev­el in 2020. Since Novem­ber 2021 the project “Con­sti­tut­ing a Euro­pean Liv­ing Lakes Asso­ci­a­tion (ELLA) empow­er­ing Civ­il Soci­ety Orga­ni­za­tions to enhance and sup­port the pro­tec­tion and sus­tain­able use of aquat­ic ecosys­tems and their relat­ed bio­di­ver­si­ty” is run­ning, the only project in Germany.

“The EU Com­mis­sion proves time and again that it is also look­ing beyond its Euro­pean hori­zons by align­ing the pro­gram: for exam­ple, LIFE sup­port­ed one of our projects for the sus­tain­able cul­ti­va­tion of shea and cocoa in Ghana, both of which are in demand as import­ed prod­ucts in Europe,” says Dr. Schae­fer. “We are par­tic­u­lar­ly pleased to sup­port a cur­rent ini­tia­tive that points to the future: our asso­ci­a­tion ELLA is final­ly giv­ing Euro­pean lake and wet­land con­ser­va­tion a firm insti­tu­tion­al frame­work. In a way, we are return­ing to our first col­lab­o­ra­tion in 2002.” In the Euro­pean Liv­ing Lakes Asso­ci­a­tion, which is sup­port­ed by the pro­gram, var­i­ous Euro­pean envi­ron­men­tal asso­ci­a­tions, coor­di­nat­ed by GNF, advo­cate for the con­ser­va­tion of water ecosys­tems — a sig­nal of coop­er­a­tion and con­fi­dence for the ecol­o­gy and nat­ur­al her­itage of the continent.