Unsealing: Benefits, Potentials, Legal Provisions and Funding: The German Experience

Soil ecosystem services are unavailable or very limited in urban areas with a high degree of soil sealing, thereby undermining the long-term quality of life of local residents at a time of climate change. To counter this, unsealing measures can contribute to soil protection and the provision of ecosystem services and thus to climate adaptation. In addition, unsealing measures are essential to compensate for new soil sealing and to ensure land degradation neutrality (SDG 15.3). However, the benefits of unsealing are undermined by the low availability of potential sites for unsealing and a number of obstacles to implementation. In Germany, various legal instruments are available to activate unsealing potentials. Relevant regulations may be found in the fields of building and soil law as well as in water, nature protection and planning law. In practice, however, such regulations are limited in their impact. The paper shows how to better exploit unsealing potentials by a more consistent application of regulatory and planning legislation by authorities and legal revisions on the part of the legislator.