Pre-University Paper from the year 2018 in the subject English - Discussion and Essays, grade: 2, , language: English, abstract: Over the past centuries, man has irretrievably destroyed parts of nature. In the meantime not only many animal and plant species are threatened with extinction. The whole ecosystem earth is endangered. And although the first international conference on nature conservation took place in Berne as early as 1913, the state of the environment has continued to deteriorate globally. The former German Minister of the Environment Klaus Töpfer once jumped in a diving suit in the Rhine. He wanted to prove that the river is clean enough to bathe in. Although this action chased many a contemporary at the end of the 80s, many European rivers, including the Rhine and even the Elbe, which was once heavily contaminated, are cleaner today. Decades of reminders from environmentalists and water experts have contributed to the fact that many waters have been salvaged with state-of-the-art wastewater treatment plants and forward-looking legislation.