Working draft proposal for discussion and comments.
Author: Michal Kravčík, Ukrainian-born Slovak water manager and hydrologist
Edit and Translation: Zuzka Mulkerin
May 2022
RESTORATION
The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration seeks to stop and reverse the degradation of ecosystems and raise awareness of the importance of river basins and soil restoration, adding to the UN resolutions on Biodiversity and Water for Sustainable Development Decade. All state departments, municipalities,
NGOs, and businesses are called to collaborate in their restoration efforts as one of the strategic pathways for achieving these resolution objectives.
WETLANDS
In support of implementing the UN Decades on Ecosystem Restoration, a best practice working group has been set up, led under the auspices of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). FAO repeatedly calls for increased efforts to restore and revitalize the landscape and forests.
Among other things, this group stressed the importance of wetlands in revitalizing the landscape. Wetlands include areas of land saturated or flooded with water either permanently or seasonally and include peatlands, bogs, ponds, lakes, marshlands, swamps, peatlands, swamp forests, marshy meadows, and floodplains. Wetlands store twice the amount of carbon compared to forests.
LAND USE, LAND COVER ALTERATIONS – REVERSAL OF LANDSCAPES DRYING OUT
Unfortunately, globally, people have dried up more than 35 percent of land compared to 1970. These soil areas have promoted biodiversity and now lost the ecosystem function they once provided. The pursuit of complex and integrated solutions is a way that can bring about systemic changes in the use, protection, and restoration of natural resources as well as climate security. Integrated water and land- use management will increase the country’s water supply, which will improve the soil and ecosystem function. Rehabilitation of water storage is a key to restoring degraded soil, mitigating the risks of floods and droughts, and enhancing crop productivity.
3 PILLARS: WATER – ENERGY – FOOD NEXUS
With a global restoration of damaged regions and ecosystems, we will be successful if we systematically apply three fundamental pillars in managing natural resources. These are WATER,
ENERGY, and FOOD. The connection between water (W) – energy (E) – food (F) draws well-known attention at the international level.
The fundamental elements on which each community and country exist are water, soil, and energy.
With these resources in ample supply, humankind could survive even in the worst of times. Worsening of natural resources: loss of soil fertility, extreme weather events, and deteriorating environmental security are risks that are a challenge to address but also are pushing our coping mechanisms to the limit. For this reason, this action plan is geared toward comprehensive and integrated management of natural resources, which can systemically restore the results of wrong decisions in the past. We will be successful if we can methodically restore three fundamental pillars in managing native resources:
WATER, ENERGY, and FOOD.
The nexus between water (W) – energy (E) – food (F) attracts much attention from economists and researchers worldwide as a challenge to address related economic growth problems. In 2011, theWorld Economic Forum published a report titled ”Water- Security: The Water-Food-Energy-Climate Nexus,” which stresses that an integrated approach to water, energy, and food can increase resource security, efficiency, poverty reduction, and better resource management in all sectors. To achieve a sustainable water-energy-food (WEF) nexus, all human, and social scientists and businesses must combine their efforts in solving problems.
CONNECTING THE DOTS IN UKRAINE
To achieve the sustainability of nexus water-energy-food (WEF), all natural science institutes and social and economically oriented scientists must combine their efforts to solve problems and approaches for integrated policies. It is also essential to transforming research results into practice and real life. War- torn Ukraine raises this subject. In Ukraine, too, the challenge is to connect the links between water, energy, and food and between weather, climate change, and biodiversity.
Comprehensive solutions to the WEF approach need to be sought, as climate change concerns water abundance, soil fertility, extreme heat, and the growth of natural disasters. One more important link arises from all the above conclusions and recommendations: It is necessary to help define and advance water, energy, and food solutions at any public policy level to make these commodities available in times of peace and crisis. Linking sectoral public policies to water, energy, and food also opens up space for the climate and socio-economic solutions to rebuilding war-torn Ukraine.
The deterioration of natural resources: loss of soil fertility, extreme weather events, and deterioration of environmental safety are risks that are a challenge to deal with but also an opportunity to manage these issues. With enough WEF resources, humanity can survive even in the worst of times. Water, energy, and food are the building blocks to rebuilding the country’s economy.
OLD WATER PARADIGM NEGATIVELY ALTERS LOCAL HYDROLOGY, WEATHER PATTERNS
AND WATERSHEDS. REBUILDING UKRAINE CAN REVERSE THIS TRENDS.
Since the second half of the last century, most countries in the world have based their rapid post-industrial economic boom on the unfortunate old water paradigm, where rainwater is an inconveniencethat needs to be rid of as quickly as possible. Most of us urbanites spend 90% of our time in themetropolitan zones, where we want a nice and dry environment to make our lives easier. For decades,modern urban planning architects have designed new metropolitan developments for drainage and sentthe rainwater down the drain to sewage and out to the waterways. We dried out our environment andour ecosystems.
Therefore, there is a permanent loss of water from small water cycles, with less water involved in photosynthesis, resulting in less carbon storage in vegetation and soil. If less water participates in thermoregulation and precipitation formation, there is a natural outcome – small water cycle degradation.
Loss of natural rainwater capture in the ecosystems and urban environment reduces the biorhythm of life in Ukraine, and its neighboring country, Slovakia. The absence of water in the landscape causes it to overheat and changes the temperature regime of the country. This causes a time and spatial change in precipitation distribution. Impervious urban surfaces and agriculture based on drainages change the hydrological cycles. Less water in the soil means less evaporation and transpiration through stomata of leaves and vegetation and less groundwater recharge. All restoration efforts need to pay attention to the water budget to rebuild the country and its economy.
If rebuilding the war-torn country, the territorial development plan cannot continue to be implemented on the principles of the old water paradigm. In urban planning, the currently used and “modern” water management is designed for drainage and offers no viable alternatives.
NEW WATER PARADIGM. SMALL WATER CYCLES AND LOCAL RAINWATER ARE PRECIOUS
AND IRREPLACEABLE NATURAL RESOURCE
Currently, Ukraine drains more than 2 billion cubic meters of rainwater from its urban territories alone.
Canal and sewage infrastructure depletes the biosphere of two billion cubic meters of stormwater and saps the vital resource out to the nearest waterways. This old urban management signifies a lost opportunity to sequester 4 million tons of CO2 each year. Suppose the reconstruction of war-torn
Ukraine were to follow the old water paradigm. In that case, the ecosystems lose annually more than 2 billion m3 of rainwater as a precious resource, and 4 million tonnes of CO2 contribute to the annual growth of the carbon footprint. By 2050, Ukraine would contribute more than 1.2 billion tonnes of CO2 to global CO2 production, even if Ukraine’s entire industry switched to a green economy. That’s one fact. The second sober fact is that more than 1500 TWh of heat would be released into the atmosphere each year from the drying out of Ukraine’s rebuilt urban areas. Traditional last-century technologies in urban land use are outdated and will continue to contribute to the rise in the temperatures over Ukraine. Urban Heat Islands and Urban Dry Islands are not a way to go.
FERTILE SOILS – WORLD NATURAL AND CLIMATE HERITAGE
For this reason, the challenge for Ukraine is to have a post-war Recovery Plan for its war-torn homeland. After the war, Ukraine can start comprehensively integrating the WEF nexus principles and rebuild its country in line with respecting the ecosystem functions of rainwater as an irreplaceable resource. The New Water Paradigm demands that rainwater is the essence of life and must be left in the landscape where it falls. This also supports international efforts to address economic development and social and environmental security and significantly rehabilitate the climate. Ukraine is one of the rarest and most fertile territories in the world, known for its black and fertile soils, which should be ranked as a world natural and climate heritage site that, even at the time of the harshest dictatorial regimes not been destroyed. Just as the Earth’s Biosphere benefits from the Amazon rainforest, so do many countries in the world benefit from Ukraine’s breadbasket.
WORLD WATER AND SOIL BANK
However, this water and carbon bank is under the human anthropogenic influence, causing alterations to the water cycle, thus increasing the extremes in the weather patterns. These anthropogenic changes affect the ecological functions and threaten the biorhythm of the world’s water and carbon banks existing in the Ukraine territory. Current grave and inexcusable war aggression pose a challenge for Ukraine and the world to protect further and sustain the Ukrainian soil in the ongoing climate change by parameters that can sustainably influence the WORLD WATER AND CARBON BANK existing on Ukrainian territory.
The world-class Ukrainian bank of water and carbon can bring prosperity and climate security to its free and proud citizens. At the same time, it can inspire the world on how to transform the state economy and bring positive examples while ensuring climate safety.
We need to realize that the current civilizations of the world are on the same boat on the raging seas while braving the globally occurring weather extremes. We need to seek, discuss, and bring about solutions that will advance the emancipation of the peoples of a world and pursue harmony, tolerance, solidarity, mutual assistance, and respect. We all have heard about a mirage. People in dried bubbles lose a realistic view of life and are under the illusion of being lost human beings in the desert without water.
PEOPLE AND WATER
The world needs new models of economic growth, in which a glass of water will be neither half empty nor half full but always full. Such a climate recovery model is attempted by the group People and Water association and NGO and supported at the local and regional levels in Slovakia. Ongoing local and regional restoration of the damaged landscape points to the economic development path that benefits climate recovery. This knowledge arose from more than 30 years of research on hydrological andclimate processes in Slovakia. Using our experience, we now want to help rebuild war-torn Ukraine in the following steps:
1. To prepare a working version of the Climate Recovery Plan for war-torn Ukraine and raise funds
from donors and supporters to cover the costs of preparing Ukraine’s climate recovery plan (June-July 2022)
2. Create a working team (about ten experts) for the processing of the Climate Recovery Plan for war-torn Ukraine (June-August 2022)
3. Establish the Institute for Climate Recovery of war-torn Ukraine, which will build the capacity for the implementation of the Plan (September-December 2022)
4. Develop a Climate Recovery Plan for war-torn Ukraine with clearly quantified benefits of climate protection, soil fertility, security, development of the local economy through legislative changes, competence in the reform of territory management, and reconstruction of war-torn settlements
(June-December 2022)
5. Presentation of the World Water and Carbon Bank Recovery Plan in Ukraine (International Conference, Košice, Uzhhorod, January-February 2023)
6. Campaign to win supporters and donors for the World Water and Carbon Bank Recovery Plan in Ukraine
7. Implementation of the first model solutions after the war.
Košice, 27 May 2022, Michal Kravčík, Chairman of NGOs People and Water, Goldman
Environmental Award Winner