Martin Kováč, principal advisor of Water Holistic, underscored the critical importance of adopting a new water paradigm to address escalating climate challenges, including devastating fires, droughts, and floods. Speaking at the afternoon workshop of the High-Level EU Conference “Partnering for the Future: BIOEAST and Beyond,”, Dec 5, 2024 in Budapest, organised under the Hungarian EU Presidency, Martin Kováč delivered a compelling call to action for transformative water management strategies.
Martin Kováč’s presentation in Budapest focused on stabilising small water cycles and enhancing climate resilience through the Water-Soil-Climate Nexus. He emphasised the indispensable role of soil and landscapes as reservoirs of carbon and water, which are fundamental to ecosystem health and climate stability. This new water – soil – climate paradigm, introduced during the Czech EU Presidency in December 2022, has since become the foundation for the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) of the BIOEAST Thematic Working Group on Fresh Water-Based Bioeconomy. “There is an urgent need to rethink water management, integrate community-level involvement in planning, and appropriately reward farmers for their contributions to improving soil water retention capacity and ecosystem services,” Martin Kováč stated. He highlighted the success of Slovakia’s pilot projects aimed at regenerating small water cycles, calling for their scale-up across the BIOEAST macro-region to demonstrate their effectiveness in solving river basin problems across the EU.
His insights built naturally upon the opening plenary session, where Jan Pokorný of ENKI emphasised the potential of strategic water management and complex role of plants to mitigate climate impacts, particularly through land cooling. Together, these presentations illuminated a holistic vision for recovery and stability of natural cycles (water, carbon, nutrition and solar energy fluxes), climate risks reduction (floods, droughts, heat waves) and sustainable supply chains including local processing of bioresources as a cornerstone of the EU’s climate resilience efforts that the BIOEAST macro-region can offer as a solution for the EU.
Marie Kubankova & Anastasia Perouli
BIOEAST HUB CR