While Denmark is known for being an environmentally conscious country internationally, there are some things that are often over exaggerated. For instance, they often use most of their arable land for livestock production rather than leaving it as a nature reserve (aka just profiting off of lands while not really preserving/conserving it at its natural state). However, technicalities aside, I will give it to Denmark for being many steps ahead of the US in terms of its many green laws. Every party in Denmark (at least) believes in climate change as you can see in their overall policies and legislation. 

For instance, in my core course (Sustainable Food and Production) we’ve looked at how overall state intervention is used to make big waves towards low lying soil and rewilderment projects. 

*What is a lowland you might ask? Lowlands are a type of soil that has a lotta carbon….it’s like the soil you see in meadows and bogs. They are often used as temporary carbon sinks but when these soils are converted to farmland, carbon is being actively released into the atmosphere, kind of like burning fossil fuels. 

Just this month, the Danish government allocated more than 600 DKK (around 90 thousand dollars) towards a project to remove shallow water from lowlands across Denmark. This massive sum of money is used to stop ditches, drains, and floods on 5,000 hectares of land. Overall, this is meant to reduce greenhouse CO2 emissions by reducing nitrogen emissions in lands post agricultural use. This would also enrich the local biodiversity by creating a healthier aquatic environment for species to thrive in the area. 

However, as most Danish politics go, there’s more being said than done. For instance, of those 78 projects, 67 have only gone through a “feasibility study” phase, 5 for processing, 1 under construction, and 4 have been cancelled. The agricultural sector is not just made up of the Ministry of Environment but a whole sector of municipalities and farmers. With enough time, money, and trust I believe that is when Denmark can actually implement these policies that they want to for the sake of a cleaner world.