Water is a mirror of the human culture. The results of Copenhagen´s Conference could have fundamental effect on stopping adverse and risky trends of climatic changes on Planet Earth.

Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish in his “Memory for Forgetfulness” says about water”: Who says water has no colour, flavour of smell? Water does have a colour that reveals itself in the unfolding of thirst… And water has the flavour of water, and a fragrance that is the scent of the afternoon breeze blown from a field with full ears of wheat waving in a luminous expanse strewn like the flickering spots of light left by the wings of a small sparrow fluttering low”.

People and Water NGO encourages Slovaks to take advantage of their newly-minted democracy by organizing town meetings where citizens questioned officials about the legality of water usage. As result, in November 1996, the Environmental Ministry cancelled the dam proposal. It was Michal Kravcik, Chairman of People and Water NGO who showed how drinking reservoirs had not been used in full and how much water was wasted by an old and repair – needed distribution systems. His alternative plan outlined the repair of these problems while minimizing the impact on environment.

The mission of the undertaking “People And Water” is to provide services to municipal and rural communities, mostly within the Carpathian region. The goal is to solve the economic, social, cultural and environmental problems on a grassroots level by encouraging citizens to be active through development, renewal and promotion of the traditional culture and diversity of this region.

In booklet “Alternative Wastewater Treatment” meant for professionals, local governments, and others wishing to solve problems related to the treatment and discharge of wastewater in small communities, Kravcik offers alternative, decentralized solutions to the traditional wastewater treatment plants typically used by larger communities. This pilot project is meant as model wastewater treatment for more than 2,400 villages in Slovakia.

Mr. Michal Kravcik, Chairman of the Slovak NGO People and Water, welcome to the interview

Q: With a group of Czech and Slovak activist, you are all set to participate at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen from 7 – 18 December 2009. Your contribution is titled “The Substantial Role of Water in the Climate System of the Earth”. What are your expectations from Copenhagen conference and the role of water in the climate system of earth?
Michal Kravcik: My expectations are simple: to incorporate in the Copenhagen Protocol a mechanism of using water for recovery of the climate based not only on local and regional – but also on continental and global level of the Planet Earth. Until now, all initiatives for solution of climatic changes addressed only CO2 reduction, and through this, to stop the breakup of the Earth´s climatic system.

Somehow we keep forgetting that water is the thermoregulator of heat. So where there is enough water, the landscape heats only slowly, while where is dry weather, the landscape overheats fast reaching big differences in temperature e.g. between night and day – or winter and summer. According to our estimates, each year over 700 billion m3 rainwater vanishes from continents – that in the past had been soaked and saturated in soil, and evaporated in the atmosphere. This is how rainwater kept the climate within limits – without any extreme floods, droughts or sudden shifts in climate.

Q: Climate change is here. It’s a reality. It’s not in the imagination or a vision of the future. Climate change adds to the existing problems. It makes everything more complex. It’s here now and we have to change. With your team you are author of “The New Theory of Global Warming”, can you explain?
Michal Kravcik: Due to the built infrastructure of tiny canals, ditches, gullies and drains, the continents are getting rid of water from small hydrological cycles – water which then accumulates in the oceans. Because of reduction of volume of soaked rainwater in the soil, and reduction of evaporation, a huge amount of heat accumulates in the atmosphere, overheating it and creating chaos in the atmosphere. As a result, extreme weather increases, bringing about more frequent and more extreme floods, droughts and related risks of water insufficiency, famine and conflicts, while endangering the food safety.

In order to avoid all this, it is enough to create conditions globally that would allow rainwater – that has been currently flowing uselessly into seas – to stay and keep at the continents so that it could saturate in soil and evaporate into the atmosphere. Such creation of conditions for areal / blanket / retention of rainwater at the continents requires a fundamental change in rainwater management, different to the existing principle – i.e. that rainwater is only a wastewater that we have to get rid of as quickly as possible – to a principle that it is vital to let rainwater to soak in the soil and return back into the atmosphere. Change of water paradigm may result in the recovery of climate in ten years, while provide enough water for humans, food and nature.

Implementation of this concept may would create several tens millions of jobs, which – in our present day global economic crisis – is by no means little.

Q: Your covering letter begins with a proverb of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius who wrote over 18 centuries ago: “A man does not sin by commission only, but often by omission” (Meditations, 9,5). The emperor-philosopher wrote part of his book on the banks of river Granova, what is now a Slovak river Hron. Can you explain and also the role of the Slovak river Hron?
Michal Kravcik: Emperor Marcus Aurelius mentions the Hron river as a place where he stayed when reinforcing his defence positions at the Northern borders of the Roman Empire. The river which in total length lies in the present Slovak territory, reminds us of the long years that this noble emperor spent at the then barbarians´ territory, and of his sense of duty to prepare himself for future threats.

Q: The need of the hour for humans is to change. One of my favourite songs by recently deceased King of Pop Michael Jackson says: “Make it a better place, for you and for me and the entire human race – there are people dying -if you care enough for the living -make a better place for you and for me. How we can do that?
Michal Kravcik: Water is a unique phenomenon on our Planet Earth, vital for the existence of life. Therefore, if we respect idea that water is our “common good”, then it is unacceptable that we are expelling that “common good” from our environment – out to the sea. One of simple possibilities how to make good things is e.g. to let the rainwater pour down from the roofs not to the drains /sewerages/, but to a garden pond, which will be giving joy not only myself, but also yourself. Such garden pond will contribute to recovery of the micro-climate in the area bringing back life and enjoyment of our environment, where we live, because the little pond´s micro-climate will have positive effect also on the surrounding environment´s micro-climate.

Water is a mirror of the human culture. The native people did not require mirrors to see themselves – they just looked into the water.

Q: At the same time voice are becoming lauder that we shouldn`t pin too many hopes on climate meeting at Copenhagen. What can be accomplished at Copenhagen?
Michal Kravcik: The results of the Copenhagen´s Conference could have fundamental effect on stopping the adverse and risky trends of climatic changes at the Planet Earth. There is, however, a great danger that some sort of “mass hysteria” may arise which wold repress minority voices for possible alternative solutions – which could address the water issue in a more effective, cheaper and less conflicting way.

I feel that, up to now, the „carbon lobby” still persists and prevails, and is quite successful in making business with the greenhouse effects, without any essential attempts to stop the climatic changes. By adopting alternative approaches, the lobby would obviously lose profits. Strangly enough, this particular lobby managed to drag on their side also the most important environmental movements of the world.

My fear is that the Copenhagen Summit on the Climatic Change will be continuation of the fight against the climatic change only at the marginal front, without really adopting meangful steps to stop the climatic change.

Q: The problem won`t go away and some say that the game of percentage cuts on past emission is fundamentally stupid, would it be better to talk real figures as how much more C02 we can afford to dump into the atmosphere in the rest of this century. What is your view?
Michal Kravcik: I will answer by using the ideas of two Russian scientists, V.G. Gorshkov and A.M. Makariev: Anorganic carbon has been constantly entering the biosphere from the Earth´s crust. With the given inputs during the last billion of years, the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere today should be a thousand times bigger in comparison with the current state. Thanks to the biotic regulation the sequestration compensated relatively very precisely the anorganic carbon emissions. In order to compensate the current anthropogenic carbon emissions, it would be enough to reduce the areas used by humans by ca 7 %, and at the same area, to restore the natural or close-to-natural ecosystems.

The Planet Mars´ atmosphere, for example, contains 95 % of CO2, while the Planet Earth´s atmosphere only 0,03 %. Despite of this, the greenhouse effect on the Earth is six times greater than that on Mars. Even if we include the differences in both planets´s densities in the calculation, we can explain this discrepancy only by existence of water vapours and clouds at the Planet Earth. The difference in temperatures on Mars are more dramatic than those on the Earth. Despite the negative image created by mass media concerning fight against the greenhouse gases emissions, the climatic (and greenhouse) effect of water, which cools or heats the Earth according to needs, is vitally important for stabilisation of climatic conditions on our Planet.

Q: The Czech President Vaclav Klaus, one of the world`s most vocal sceptics on the topic of global warming, says there are increasing doubts in the scientific community about weather humans are causing changes in the climate of weather the changes are simply naturally occurring phenomena. In 2007 Klaus published a book on the worldwide campaign to stop climate change entitled “Blue Planet in Green Chains: What is under Threat – Climate or Freedom, please comment?
Michal Kravcik: Frankly, I have not read the Czech Presidents´s book. But personally I have no doubts that – apart from many other factors – part of climatic change has been caused by human activities. By shifting the majority voice on climatic changes to the marginal issue, only roots for the sceptics to argue that the climatic change in fact does not exist , or if it does, then it is beyond the human reach to influence it, because it is part of the Earth´s natural processes.

I consider this a very dangerous trend for the Planet Earth´s sustainable development.

Q: Water, water seems to be pouring from your writings. What water experts say, is that despite the world`s “wetter” status, the future of fresh water is in jeopardy. Are voices laud enough ?
Michal Kravcik: I often argue that it is not important how much water people use, but it is vital what they will do with it after they use it. The current civilization considers rainwater and used water as a waste – and this is a real tragedy! It is not enough to invent more and more sophisticated solutions how to use the last remaining bits of water more effectively. Now it is high time to launch the global restoration of small hydrological cycles at the continents. Only then it is possible to turn the dried-out yellowed regions into a green fertile land. At the moment, I with my partners work on the “Green Desert Project” in which we want to offer technologies that could restore water cycles also in the dried-up regions of the world.

Q: Conflicts over where the build dams, how to divert water to agriculture, who gets more water and why, have long been simmering issues that will only increase as worldwide population increases and water supplies diminish. These are tough questions. Are they also “moral questions”?
Michal Kravcik: The cause of lack of water on the Planet Earth is not the population growth, as often argued, but the fact that the management of water is based on metaphysical principle, i.e. we cannot interfere with it. As result, the legislation protects only water that we can see. We have a mental problem to understand that water which evaporated from the landscape is not a loss, but consequently returns back in nature in the form of rain. What follows is – that the water reservoir is a whole water cycle, which – if holed by e.g. city sewage system collecting and draining rainwater into the sea – starts to empty until it dries-up completely.

There are plenty of examples all over the world in form of extinct civilizations and cultures. Our current civilization works hard, too, to empty this water reservoir until dried-up, and the life with it.

Q: Areas with abundant water supplies are busily drafting contracts that guarantee them rights or profitable gains over their water. One would say the same story of human “greed”. What other alternatives are there?
Michal Kravcik: Many mega-projects have been launched which will probably fuel the business spirals with the last remains of fresh water. Strangly enough, also in the dried-up regions it is possible to restore water resources – even to their original condition – like there were several thousands years ago, when that country was thriving with green, streams and rivers with clean transparent water. The alternative is to restore water in small hydrological cycles.

At the beginning of 90-ties, we have elaborated the “Blue Alternative” aimed at creation of water resources. In those days, the “Blue Alternative” was the alternative to a dam, financially several times cheaper . Gradually, we gained knowledge that this alternative addressed not only water resources, but also it restored the production potential of soils, biodiversity and recovered the climate.

Q: It is widely assumed that urbanization will continue. But this is not necessarily so. The growing scarcity of water and the high cost of the energy investing in transporting water over long distances may itself being to constrain urban growth. Are ecocities and building cities in balance with nature the answer?
Michal Kravcik: It is historical fact, that cities grew both in population and in the territory. At the beginning, there was a community that usually settled next to a water source or spring. As the community grew, it was changing its environment including conditions of permanent supplement of water resource by rainfall, and so the resource dried-out. People started digging wells, gradually exploiting the underground waters. The community then transported water through pipelines from the close areas, later also from the more distant places, and so the water resources gradually dried-out and dried-out completely. As a result, the climatic conditions also changed (less rainfalls), until the community endangered its own existence , leading to sole jeopardy of the community itself. They consequently moved to another place, where there was water, and did the same mistakes again.

Today, we have attacked the last water supplies, and those who still have them can look forward to a big businness in the 21st century. This, however, is not sustainable, as those resources are depletable, and ways of using water do not secure restoration.

Certain hope arises in the urban development concepts based on the eco-city principles, however, in present days it is still only in position of a fashionable hit – i.e. use of renewable energy sources, waste recycling, public transportation.

Water management, however, remains in position of an old paradigm : to drain away rainwater as quickly as possible, and to bring new clean spring water to cities from the nature. The principle of eco-cities will be functioning on ecological principles only provided that not even a drop of rainwater from the city area would be drained directly into the nearest stream.

Q: Early cities relied on food and water from the surrounding countryside, but today cities often depend on distant sources even for basic amenities. The evolution of modern cities is tied to advances in transport, initially for ships and trains combined with cheap oil that provided the mobility of people and freight that fueled the phenomenal urban growth of the twentieth century. In terms of water fresh water availability, how will the cities of future look like?
Michal Kravcik: In my native city of Kosice, we started first with working on a concept that not even a drop of rainwater flows away, and so that the owner of a house or land accepted the water use principles at priority, and uses energy of the site and recycles not only the waste, but also water. However, the politicians did not culturally accept the concept, as it would endanger their profits. In essence, this model elaborates a system that would recycles everything in the environment in which humans live. And we have to begin with water. The precipitation in a city amounting to e.g. 100 million m3 water annually represents an enormous potential, one can do wonders with it.

The existing concept of urban development is based on draining away of rainwater, and on bringing new water to the city from rural areas through pipelines. This is a double mistake and very short-sighted.

Q: Is Water becoming ‘the new oil’? Population, pollution, and climate put the squeeze on potable supplies – and private companies smell a profit. Others ask, should “water” be a human right, what is your view?
Michal Kravcik: A human right cannot exist, where water is treated in a irresponsible way. I suppose it is irrevelant/incongruous/ to speak about e.g. rights for water if there is no responsibility for water. And where water is treated in a irresponsible way, there is lack of water, and „good business” with water is thriving. It is „in” to speak and lead campaigns against privatization of water resources. It is essential to realize that if there is more water in environment we live in, there will be no pressure on privatization of water resources.

Q; Developed nations have taken cheap, abundant fresh water largely for granted. Now global population growth, pollution, and climate change are shaping a new view of water as “blue gold.” Water’s hot-commodity status has snared the attention of big equipment suppliers like General Electric as well as big private water companies that buy or manage municipal supplies – notably France-based Suez and Aqua America, the largest US-based private water company. Global water markets, including drinking water distribution, management, waste treatment, and agriculture are a nearly $500 billion market and growing fast, says a 2007 global investment report. Please comment ?
Michal Kravcik: I take the liberty to say that a new form of “water colonialism” is arising today. If we have no car, we can walk. If we have no water, we are thirsty and hungry and our aggression increases, as people – in essence – depend on water. I can see that in my own country – Slovakia – how the aggression in society increases despite the fact that we are a country relatively abundant in water. But only relatively, as a desertification process has been silently going on also here. Statistics are recording it as a fact without knowing the real reason. The future will not concern businesses that will transport water from places relatively abundant in fresh water to places where it is lacking.
Such model in whole is short-sighted and would not stop international conflicts for water. This model of dividing water from an ever-decreasing cake is the cause of our civilization´s doom.

In a complex way, we have oportunity to get enough water for people, food and nature and healthy climate by means of water restoration in small hydrocycles even in countries suffering from droughts.

Such a solution does exist, but it is too dangerous, as it can ruin global distributors and their bussineses with water. I suppose it is them who do not support such solutions but it would be also in their interests.

Q: Because water is essential for human life, its distribution is best left to more publicly accountable government authorities to distribute at prices the poorest can afford, those water warriors say. Are you a “water warrior”?
Michal Kravcik: More water in environment means – more life. Even though we perceive water only egocentrically through our human life, we depend on life of plant and animal kingdoms, while all those unique life forms depend on water.

To have more water in the environment means more life, more food and wealth. By systematicaly working on destruction of water in our environment, we in fact destroy life. In our culture killing life is a crime, so if we are to be consistent – destruction of water is also crime against humanity. Every person on Planet Earth should know that to destroy water from environment is a crime against humanity, because fate of people depend on fate of water.

Q: We’re at a transition point where fundamental decisions need to be made by societies about how this basic human need – water – is going to be provided. Some view the end of “material culture”, please expand?
Michal Kravcik: Water is mirror of human culture. Sadly, our culture is based not on clean limpid water, but on troubled and untransparent water, which approximates to the materialistic concept of the world. Therefore, we have difficulties to understand that water whihc evaporates is not a “loss” but that it is part of eternal cycle in nature.

Through plants, water evaporates from soil to the atmosphere (food production), creates clouds (protection of climate), condensates, and in form of rainfalls returns back to landscape feeding it (creation of water resources for sustainable life).
Less evaporated water produces less food, creates less clouds, condensates less water vapour and creates less rainfalls bringing about drying out of land, springs, streams and whole rivers.

Q: What’s different now is that it’s increasingly obvious that we’re running up against limits to new fresh water supplies, It’s no longÂŹÂŹer cheap and easy to drill another well or dam another river. Now we have to learn to manage water demand and – on top of that – deal with climate change…What is your view?
Michal Kravcik: I read recently that in Africa they cut eucalyptus trees, because they consume a lot of water, and as communities need water, they decided to end the eucalyptuses lives. This is an awful misunderstanding and misconception of essence of water. Also in this continent during rain seasons enormous amounts of rainwater have been drained uselessly to the sea, which is missing during drought seasons. Also in the dried-up Africa the desertification processes is expaning, therefore the price of water in those regions is not cheap and easily available.
Sadly, we are stuck in an old paradigm – i.e. if water is abundant and we literally chase it away from our environment, but later we cry that we do not have it.

The new water paradigm says that it is necessary to shift our attitude towards water. For example, rainwater is not wastewater that we need to get rid of as quickly as possible, but it is the basis of all water at continents.

It is a gift from heaven that we should handle with care – like with a heavenly gift.

Q: You are Chairman of the “People and Water” Ngo in Slovakia. Tell us something about yourself, how do you find yourself Chairman of the People and Water Ngo, beginnings, mission, reflection… would you like to introduce your team?
Michal Kravcik: Our team is small. During the era of Communism, I worked at the Institute of Hydrology at the Slovak Academy of Science. After the fall of Comunism, 1993, we launched the “People and Water” NGO as independent platform aimed to address environmental and water-management problems predominantly in our region.

My team consists mainly of volunteers who try to bring in innovative solutions, and if along the way we manage to persuade someone to finance our „crazy” ideas, then we present our solutions for the project.

Q: You work out of Kosice, has Kosice a particular role to play?
Michal Kravcik: Even though I have been living in Kosice over thirty years, almost all my activities are outside Kosice. I was interested to implement some development projects for our community in Kosice, but it did not turn out very well. As we say here in Slovakia – nobody is prophet at home.

Q: Introduce the region, what is the environmental situation like, water situation, challenges…?
Michal Kravcik: In the past, water projects in my region were implemented very much according to the principle of old paradigm. Water infrastructure was built in order to drain away excessive water during rainfalls, and consequently projects were prepared and implemented for transport of water from certain areas with dams to the areas where water was required.

Later a new phenomena arose, such as more frequent and extreme floods and droughts, windstorms and gales, extreme weather and decrease of water resources in the country. The challenge here is to change all this.Both general public and local and regional politicians begin to understand that it is aboslutely vital to protect water and to switch from principle of quick draining water during rainfalls – to principle of catching this water during rainfalls and consequently keep it for later use when water is scarse.

Q: First projects, challenges, success stories, perhaps a “water story”…?
Michal Kravcik: Our first serious project was in early 90-ties, when political-social conditions in Slovakia were changing and the door opened for promotion of alternatives in water management. We prepared an alternative project (Blue Alternative), a ten times cheaper alternative to building of a dam for drinking water supplies for a larger city. As a result, a conflict arose, we then we not aware of big lobbies with ambitions for big profits from the state budget for big dams megaprojects and they would not allow promotion of a cheaper alternative.

And even though we were not successful with our alternative then, we managed to stop the dam´s construction and gained a lot of interesting knowledge about this this issue which we could use later not only to address water problems, but also for restoration of a healthy climate on our Planet, for example cheaper, more effective and with social justice. Anyway to cut the long story short, what we are affraid now – is that that there are many lobbies in the world, which – just like those in Slovakia – would do their best to stop such initiatives

Q: Your is your alternative water management about?
Michal Kravcik: The alternative water concept is rather simple:
to let all rainwater to get soaked in soil and saturate the landscape, and consequently let water to evaporate. Because the more soaked water is in landscape, the more water supplies in the soil and in the underground, more water would evaporate. More evaporated evaporated in the atmosphere results in more rainfalls, and it is the most perfect irrigation /watering/ on the Planet Earth.

Sadly, we are doing it the other way round. We prevent rainwater from soaking and then we send it to the sea – therefore there is less and less water at the continents, while the green country turns into desert with disorders in weather up to climatic changes.

Q: In 1993 you proposed Water for a Third millennium, an alternative water management concept for the entire nation, please expand?
Michal Kravcik: The change of political-social conditions in our country allowed alternative concepts to become reality. As representative of environmental movements in Slovakia, I coordinated works on elaboration of an alternative water policy that found its way even in the Slovak Parliament. The Government of Slovakia was consequently obliged to incorporate the Water for the Third Millenium Program in the official water policy of the Slovak Republic.

The lobby groups, however, did their best to promote their proposal so that the Slovak Government instead of fulfilling the Slovak Parliament´s resolutions, approved the guarranty for 500 billion USD loan /credit/ which defacto buried not only Water for Third Millennium, but also the whole water management in Slovakia. These are some of the difficulties which we face.

Following the Water for Third Millennium program and institutional reform of water managment, Slovakia could become leader in an up-to-date water policy in Europe. Instead, water management has become the most unprofitable and unperspective economic branch in which hundreds of US dollars are drowned (in vain).

I should remind here that Water for Third Millennium – during the years years when we were promoting it – represented a more daring water policy than the EU-promoted concept of the Framework Guideline for Water which is still based on the old paradigm.

Q: Villages of the 3rd Millennium in the Carpathian Euroregion, based on grassroots principles, please explain further ?
Michal Kravcik: We understood and realized that people need education, good examples and information. Therefore, we created the project “The Village of Third Millennium” as continuation of the activities started at the Upper Torysa region, where we successfully stopped the dam building.

We taught people how to develop their businesses and how to enhance their environment, how to protect their cultural heritage and how to help each other and how to use new innovative technologies on practical examples.

Q: Your web site I packed with informations. There are two saying which caught my attention: “in a drop of water we learn about the word” – and second: ” Water – the mirror of the human culture”, do explain?
Michal Kravcik: The whole world comes from water. In water is the footmark of our life, and the way we treat water reflects our culture. It is strange that even though everything comes from water, water is placed at the botton of our educational system.

We can define history of man, behaviour and culture in terms of water. Where people did not respect water, life vanished. There are many parables either in Bible or in Quran. But we do not perceive the depth of those parables. It is as we would have lost our sensitivity, and no longer se ourselves in the mirror of water. Some research show that water has memory. If it is so, then also religions that speak about reincarnation of life, have logics in the very essence of water.

Q: Introduce us to “The Blue Planet Project”?
Michal Kravcik: The Blue Planet project is based on knowledge that by changing the lanscapes, humans dry them out and change the life conditions in a negative sense. For example, if the humans dry out the land and destroy its fertility by modifying land, then there is also a reversible solution – bring back water to the land system and restore the water cycles in the dried-up land to make it fertile again.

We have come to know that the intensity of the landscape changes results in the annual decrease of water in small water cycles amounting to 700 billion m3 – of water that accumulates in the oceans. Another example, by areal blanket water retention of the same amount of rainwater in the dried-out landscape we can change a yellowed dried-out landscape into fertile green landscape again.

Q: “Not even a single raindrop should be allowed to flow into the sea without having made use of it for the benefit of the people” reads also on your web site. Is this how our future water strategy should be formulated?
Michal Kravcik: Yes, this is a quotation of a Sri Lankan king from 12th century. Despite super technologies, the current civilization has not yet grown to the level of wise people´s perceptions of ancient times. In this simple wise sentence, the king clearly stated the fact which we – 900 years later, should consider if we do not want to die. If we do not do it, we will die just like many other proud cultures before us, which – dried-up their landscapes.

Q: Water, resources, appropriate technologies and management, challenges and solutions for your region :
Michal Kravcik: It is vital for my region today to create conditions so that rainwater that is drained to the rivers and sea by gullies and ditches, should stay in the region and create water resources and supplies for sustianable development, while mitigating the impacts of the climatic change.

We work now on technologies and methodologies how to do it effectively and to avoid conflicts.

Q: What solutions would you propose to meet the challenges of water scarcity?
Michal Kravcik: If there is lack of water, we seek solutions that could reduce water consumption. It means that we are trying to reduce consumption from ever diminishing cake of water. Such a way leads to hell. It is time now to change the strategy. Lack of water is caused by vanishing of water from small hydro cycles – i.e. if we learn that we should keep each drop not only of rainwater, but also of wastewater in the land by means of technologies so that it could return to the small hydro cycle, then the water resources start to grow also in dried-up countries.

Q: Is there a framework for identifying emerging challenges?
Michal Kravcik: The most urgent challenge of present civilization is to understand that the drying out of landscapes has much more serious impact on climatic change than increase of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Q: Are water rights and important issue?
Michal Kravcik: If we accept that water is life, then the human rights equal water rights, and our duty is to do all we can to keep more and more water in our environment. Then also human rights will be well protected.

Otherwise new form of colonialism will arise, because human life depends on water.

Q; Recycled water – it that an immediate solution?
Michal Kravcik: All over the world the wastewater cleaning plants which – fter cleaning water drain it to the rivers and seas – should be banned. A perfect cleaning of wastewater is water evaporation into the atmosphere. It means that it is vital to develop such water cleaning technologies which by using vegetation could remove
pollution from wastewater and could transpire water into water cycle.

Q: How should we change the way we think about use of water?
Michal Kravcik: It is not important how much water humans use per a day, but it is fundamentally important what humans do with water after using it. If they drain it to the stream and sea after cleaning, then water is lost forever from the small hydro cycle.

Q: Current projects, challenges you wish to share?
Michal Kravcik: We have many ambitious projects today, but they depend on whether we manage to persuade the authorities to implement them. Our biggest project today includes elaboration of a new initiative for recovery of climate that we want to offer the participants of the Copenhagen Conference on Climatic Changes. In sums, it says says that there is cheaper, quicker , more effective and socially just solution for protection of the Planet Earth´s climate. The successiveness of the project depends on whether we will be allowed to speak at this important forum, and present our arguments and proposed solutions.

Mr. Michal Kavcik, thank you very much for this valuable insight.

Good luck in Copenhagen.

By Irena Knehtl
Published: 12/4/2009 & 12/6/2009

Source web pages:
People and Water – Water Talk with Slovak NGO Chairman Michal Kravcik on the Eve of Copenhagen Conference – 1/2

People and Water – Water Talk with Slovak NGO Chairman Michal Kravcik on the Eve of Copenhagen Conference – 2/2