Restoring Slovakia's Landscape Water Cycle

People and Water was founded by hydrologist and 1999 Goldman Environmental Prize winner Michal Kravčík to prove that small, cheap, nature-based water retention structures can fight both floods and drought better than dams and drainage canals. Their approach became the backbone of Slovakia's national Landscape Revitalisation and Integrated River Basin Management Programme, adopted by the government in 2010. Within about 18 months, 488 municipalities across Slovakia built roughly 100,000 check dams, bioretention ponds and infiltration trenches, restoring an estimated 10 million cubic meters of landscape water retention capacity and creating 7,700 seasonal jobs. In the Rajec Valley, one farm reclaimed 27 hectares of degraded land and saw its spelt harvest double within five years after adopting the group's methods.