The Eckernförde Talks on September 8 at the Stadthalle Eckernförde will address these questions. The event is a collaboration between the GREEN SCREEN International Nature Film Festival, the Schleswig-Holstein Nature Conservation Foundation, and Science Comes to Town.

Fewer songbirds, fewer insects, fewer fish—this trend is hard to miss. However, the overall extinction of species is even more dramatic. It is caused by humanity’s reckless treatment of the Earth. The rate at which we are consuming the landscape—along with all its animal and plant inhabitants—remains as rapid as ever. Our natural world is suffering from our consumption of raw materials, our emission of pollutants, and our general disregard for nature.

The problem is essentially recognized, which is why environmental policymakers are working on global and local biodiversity strategies. However, improvements can be achieved particularly quickly in each individual’s immediate living environment. In one’s own garden, on the side of a house, and on the roof, there is room for biodiversity on a small scale, and Germany’s 17 million gardens collectively cover more area than the country’s national parks.

Maria Furtwängler demonstrates what can be achieved here with minimal effort in the film “Deutschland, deine Gärten” (Germany, Your Gardens), which is part of the festival program and from which excerpts will be shown to spark discussion at the Eckernförde Talks. Together with its guests, the GREEN SCREEN Festival will explore where the major opportunities lie in this small-scale biodiversity initiative and why, on the other hand, garden greenery continues to disappear beneath concrete and gravel.

Guests include Schleswig-Holstein’s Minister of the Environment, Tobias Goldschmidt; the coordinator of the statewide biodiversity project “Gröön Dörp,” Frida Sandberg, the director of the “Blütenbunt-Insektenreich” project at the Schleswig-Holstein Nature Conservation Foundation, Antje Walter, and Hauke Meyer, head of a horticultural business.

More information: https://www.greenscreen-festival.de/festival/sonderveranstaltungen/ Go to event website