Change in law: More construction projects allowed in protected areas in future?
The Environment Committee of the Council of States has opened the consultation on an amendment to the Nature and Cultural Heritage Protection Act. The hurdles for interventions in protected sites and landscapes are to be lowered; cantonal utilization interests are to be given more weight.
The preliminary draft prepared by the Commission relaxes the regulation in Art. 6 para. 2 of the Nature and Cultural Heritage Protection Act (NHG). The NHG aims to preserve natural and cultural monuments "undiminished". Protected are 162 landscape areas, and 1,274 localities. In the future, construction is to be allowed in these protected areas if the protection interest of national importance is opposed by certain interests of equal or greater value of the federal government or the cantons, the Environmental Commission informs.
Accordingly, the cantons would in future have more weight in the balancing of interests between the protection of objects of national importance and the benefits of the planned construction projects. Under current law, the interest in protection of national importance must be offset by an interest in use that is also of national importance, so that a weighing of interests can be considered at all.
Goal: Buildings in protected areas should be approved more easily
The parliamentary initiative for this change in the law was initiated by FDP Council of States member Joachim Eder. He wants to increase the discretionary powers of the cantons and reduce the influence of the Federal Commission for the Protection of Nature and Cultural Heritage (ENHK). The commission's expert opinions often decide whether a project is realized in a protected area.
The goal of the conservative majority in the Environment Commission is to increase the number of interventions in protected areas that can be approved. All SVP, FDP and CVP representatives in the commission were in favor of the amendments to the law. The representatives of the SP, the Greens and the BDP rejected them.
Nature and heritage associations vehemently reject the revision of the NHG. The bill aims "to further weaken the protection of the most valuable landscapes and natural monuments," according to a joint statement by Pro Natura, WWF Switzerland and BirdLife Switzerland. The objects of the BLN inventory are in any case insufficiently protected, because according to an evaluation of the Parliamentary Administration Control Office PVK, the protection goal is not achieved in two thirds of the objects.
