Fewer and fewer compensation areas in the Leipzig urban area: the Parks and Green Spaces Department has no figures

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The dispute over the small wood on Capastraße has also brought to the fore once again an issue that Leipzig’s environmental authorities are keen to play down. For in the Property Office’s proposal for the sale of the copse, it was once again boldly claimed that the loss of the copse could be offset elsewhere. Yet the copse itself is already a compensatory measure. At the last council meeting, the BSW group was keen to find out just how many potential compensation sites Leipzig actually still has within the city limits.

After all, given how casually the city promises to compensate for the loss of biotopes every time a construction project is proposed, it ought to have a veritable abundance of such areas still to be planted.

And there is indeed a compensation register, replied the Office for Urban Greenery and Waterways (ASG). However, the information cannot be extracted from it. Or, to quote the response: “To provide the relevant information from the nature conservation compensation register, a manual search would have to be carried out. A statistical record of the cases in question is not required by law and is not kept.”

Consequently, the Green Spaces Office is unable to provide any figures in hectares for the compensation areas designated since 2015 – neither within the city limits nor outside them. This is because the city has long been attempting to offset the loss of green space within the city through compensation measures somewhere in the surrounding area.

Once again, only possible to research manually?

In fact, the full response from the Department for Urban Green Spaces and Waterways merely indicates that they have no overview whatsoever. Not even regarding the municipal compensation areas that have since been reclaimed for construction projects.

“There is no systematic documentation of cases in which already established compensation areas have been re-used, thereby necessitating replacement measures at other locations,” explains the Office for Urban Greenery, giving a reason that actually belongs in the pre-computer era: “It requires very time-consuming manual research, including the use of analogue data and information. It is not possible within the deadline set for the enquiry.”

However, the BSW parliamentary group had only asked for figures dating from 2015 onwards. These should, in fact, also be available digitally at the Office for Urban Green Spaces. After all, the administration would also need to work with these figures – and has done so, at the very least, since the City Council adopted the net-zero strategy for Leipzig in 2022
. Of course, it is only possible to work towards this target if one knows the area in hectares of the compensation sites still available within the city.

Competing land-use demands

Even the BSW parliamentary group was left puzzled by the city’s vague strategy on this issue and specifically asked: “How does the City of Leipzig assess the long-term availability of suitable compensation areas on municipal land?”

In response to this question, the Office for Urban Greenery and Waterways actually admits that it has absolutely no idea whether any compensation areas are still available within the city limits.

It puts it like this: “Land is a very scarce resource in a growing city like Leipzig. Different demands on land use compete with one another. In addition, there is the challenge of ensuring legal access to the land on which compensation measures are to be carried out. The very limited availability of land is a major obstacle to the implementation of compensation measures. The administration’s aim is to identify, at a conceptual and city-wide level, areas where compensation measures can be implemented, whilst promoting synergies with other urban development issues (e.g. climate change adaptation) wherever possible.”

And things become even more vague when the ASG states: “Nevertheless, the availability of suitable sites for offsetting interventions in nature and the landscape within the city of Leipzig will continue to decline. This is attributable, amongst other things, to the differing weighting given to nature and landscape concerns in balancing procedures when there are conflicting objectives between competing land-use interests.”

Compensate – but where?

Which – if you translate that into everyday language – means that the city is only too willing to sacrifice green space when there are ‘competing land-use interests’.

Just as in the case of the Capa-Wäldchen, where a decision to sell is quickly drawn up, clearly stating that there are only very vague ideas about possible compensation measures in the immediate vicinity: “The existing woodland would have to be cleared in whole or in part as part of the land-use change and replaced by compensatory measures elsewhere. During negotiations with RB, it must be determined whether parts of the woodland can be preserved as part of the development. The compensatory measures should, where possible, be carried out locally and must be approved by the Higher Forestry Authority.

One focus could be on enhancing the riparian zone along the Elster basin. In principle, compensation should preferably take place on areas that are significant for the green-blue infrastructure network in Leipzig.”

A small consolation: in future, there will indeed be figures available on the compensation areas within the urban area. This is because the ASG itself needs these figures if it is to organise and financially secure biotope management there through the City Forests Department.

The response to the relevant question states: “With the establishment of the Biotope Maintenance Unit within the City Forests Department, which began in 2024, the relevant tasks have been consolidated there. The areas are currently being digitised into an inventory register and a corresponding maintenance management system is being set up. The costs will only be determined on that basis.”