Prince Charles is right to reach out to the Germans. Together we can rescue biodiversity

The Prince of Wales feels passionately about many things, from art and architecture to doing his bit to enable every youngster to share the opportunities of his new grandson. But two of his passions have just come into focus: Anglo-German relations and global biodiversity. Alone in British public life, the heir to the throne is looking beyond Brexit.

In a speech given in Berlin at the start of a four-day tour, the Prince reassures the German people that “whatever the shape of our future relationship, and whatever is negotiated between governments and institutions, it is more clear to me…that the bonds between us will, and must, endure, and that our young people, and future generations, will have as much cause to cherish those bonds as our generation has had.”

When Prince Charles tells his hosts that we are “so much more than simply neighbours”, he knows that they see our Royal Family as no less German than British. “We are friends and natural partners,” he continues, waxing lyrical, “bound together by our common experience, mutual interests and shared values, and deeply invested in each other’s future.”

That future, of course, is not merely continental, but planetary. Yet our shared past, for Charles, is not merely political, but personal: he is of German descent on both sides. This year marks the bicentenary of two of his most eminent ancestors: Victoria and Albert. The latter, in particular, has been a lifelong inspiration to him. The Prince Consort’s legacy is still visible in the museums of South Kensington, paid for by the proceeds of the Great Exhibition that was his brainchild, not to mention the Hall and Memorial erected in his memory by his adoring wife.

Charles, like Albert, deserves to be remembered as a great philanthropic patron of the arts and sciences. But if there is one theme that unites his work, it is a love of nature. As a practical gardener and conservationist, as a farmer and forester who cares deeply about his custodianship of the landscape he has inherited, the Prince is the kind of environmentalist that can unite public opinion rather than divide it.

Such unity of purpose is sorely needed if our wildlife on land and sea is to survive. The new United Nations Global Assessment Report on biodiversity makes grim reading. Based on a vast body of research, including indigenous and local sources as well as 145 scientific experts from 50 countries, the report warns that up to a million species are at risk of extinction. But such damage to animal and plant life also has dire implications for humanity. Sir Robert Watson, the British chair of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), does not pull his punches: “We are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health, and quality of life worldwide.”

Surely protecting biodiversity is the perfect post-Brexit project for Anglo-German collaboration — and the Prince of Wales is the right person to champion the cause. Our two nations have perhaps done more than any others to enhance the environment, but which are still faced with huge challenges, from air pollution to loss of wildlife. Brexit need not inhibit a new bilateral urgency about tackling the threats to nature: local and global, on land and in the oceans, economic and political. In Europe, only Britain and Germany have the scientific knowledge, the international soft power and the entrepreneurial confidence to make a last stand for biodiversity. Yes, and we have the money, too.

Charles has launched many charitable initiatives in his life, notably the Prince’s Trust. He is also a practical businessman who has made a success of the Duchy of Cornwall, thereby reducing royal dependence on the taxpayer. As he looks forward to a reign that will necessarily be much shorter than his mother’s, the Prince is right to be building on longstanding links with Germany, for him a kind of home from home.

I well recall reporting for the Daily Telegraph on another German tour in 1988. Then the focus was largely on his late wife, Diana, Princess of Wales. An older and wiser man, Charles is now capable of mobilising public opinion on both sides of the North Sea in support of his vision. Let the Prince of Wales, when he ascends the throne, become a servant of the animal kingdom and the natural world.