A book on the 40-year history of the Federal Environment Agency and environmental protection provides background information to the exhibition. A team of three historians devoted many months visiting numerous sites and conducting dozens of interviews with contemporary witnesses to compile the nearly 200-page chronicle. The book's ten chapters tell readers how the UBA tackled some 50,000 illegal dump sites in West Germany in the mid-1970s, launched the world’s first ecolabel, the Blue Angel, in 1978, and came forward to advocate a comprehensive ban on asbestos back in 1981.
The spectrum of issues which the UBA covers has been and remains broad: it ranges from avoidance of waste and climate protection to the authorisation of plant protection products. The Agency has worked on some issues for over 40 years, for example clean air policy, noise abatement, and waste. Issues such as resource conservation became relevant more recently. The focus of its work has always been to enable man to live protected against harmful environmental influences to the extent possible.
Ms Rita Schwarzelühr-Sutter, Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety, acknowledged the UBA’s 40 years of work, saying: “Whether it was unleaded petrol or the catalytic converter, the recommendations made by the Federal Environment Agency did not always find favour with policy makers, industry and associations. However, its great determination and its independent and scientifically-founded arguments ultimately prevailed on many issues. What has been decisive is that its recommendations are than only laboratory-tested: such developments as the low-noise goods vehicle or the particulate trap were always tested for practicability. The Federal Environment Agency has thus evolved into an indispensable advisor to environmental policy makers.”
Since its foundation the UBA has acted as an early warning system, aiming to detect and evaluate possible future adverse effects on man and the environment, and to propose practicable solutions to policy makers.
The UBA has collected comprehensive data on the state of the environment for decades, and it advises all of the Federal Government on the basis of the knowledge gained. Agency experts do research in their own laboratories or commission research to scientific institutions in Germany and abroad.
One of its duties since 1974 has been to provide public information on environmental issues. The UBA also enforces environmental laws, that is to say it puts them into practice. Examples include emissions trading and the authorisation of chemicals, pharmaceutical drugs and plant protection products.
At present the UBA employs some 1,500 people at 13 sites. Seven of these sites are in the Agency’s own air quality monitoring network. Since 2005 its headquarters have been in the city of Dessau-Roßlau in Saxony-Anhalt. The UBA’s larger offices are in Berlin, Bad Elster (Saxony) and Langen (Hesse).
Further information
The anniversary publication „40 Jahre Umweltbundesamt“is now available free of charge.
The 40 Jahre Umweltbundesamt exhibition is taking place at UBA headquarters. Address: Wörlitzer Platz 1, 06844 Dessau-Roßlau, Germany.
Opening hours
Monday to Friday: 9.00 to 18.00
Saturday and Sunday: 9.00 to 16.00
Free admission!
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