Introduction
All the continents of the world have been suffering from floods and droughts, fires, lack of water and food, famine, regional conflicts and climatic changes. During the last years, these phenomena have been evoking grave concern in our civilization’s future. The damages caused by water all over the world exceed hundreds of billion EUR annually. According to the prognoses, these damages tend to rise. To this, the coming economic crisis has been added bringing also unemployment with it. Nevertheless, it also brings opportunity to transfer and shift loosen work power to solve the above mentioned problems – just like it was successfully done during the Great Depression in the 30-ties of the 20th century in the USA, in framework of the New Deal program.

In the 30-ties of the previous century, the American New Deal consisted of large number of programs and initiatives based on federal, national and local levels, with various duration, costs and number of stakeholders. Many of them could come under criticism as for their instant efficiency. President Roosevelt was aware of it, however, he preferred the job creation, as he regarded the direct financial help to individuals during the time of unemployment as the „drug unnoticeably destroying the human spirit“. With the benefit of hindsight we can say that the programs not only gave jobs to millions of people, but they also left a healthier land behind, with planted trees and forests, ponds, dams or terraces – these are the benefits that we feel even today.
Nowadays, we can hear from the world leaders´ speeches their attempt to apply the New Deals principles, and to utilize the experience from it. So, UN Secretary-General Pan Ki-Moon during Davos´ World Economic Forum this January called on the world’s business and other leaders to use the current economic crisis to launch a “Green New Deal” that creates jobs and fights climate change. Ban Ki-moon called for “a new constellation of international cooperation – governments, civil society and the private sector, working together for a collective global good,“ as well as for a “breaking the tyranny of short-term thinking in favour of long-term solutions.”
Inspired by the ideas of the New Deal we here propose a programme New Water Deal of rainwater harvesting and rainwater retention that in this time of economic crisis could create millions of jobs, and contribute to the long-term environmental health via soil protection, biodiversity protection and regional climate recovery.
Protection of water resources, flood-defence and recovery of climate
According to the publicized sources (UN, World Bank, EU, UNDP, MDG), the current state of majority of watersheds can be characterized as follows :
• A vast desertification process has been occurring currently at all continents, resulting in decrease of natural water retaining capacity of watersheds, and in increase of rainwater surface run-off; as a result, risk and frequency of floods, droughts and fires and climate change have increased.
• Deterioration of drinking water resources and decrease of their abundance has been occurring.
• Erosion has been accelerating resulting in decrease of soil fertility, thus threatening the global food safety.
• Considerable constriction of natural ecological functions of streams has been occurring, resulting in degradation of natural water and wetland ecosystems.
• International tension has been increasing and conflicts for water has been rising.
Very similar evaluations can be found recently also in the strategic materials of significant international institutions. Last but not least, the UN documents state that in 2025 over 3 billion people will live in a state of water stress. The causes of floods include worsened capacity of landscape to hold rainwater due to damage of landscape by removing water-holding and erosion-preventive elements (deforestation, drying-out of wetlands, ploughing up/destruction of the balks, elimination of small preserves etc.) These factors cause the change of run-off conditions and increase the risk of local floods – up to the vast deluges. At the same time, the rapid outflow of rainwater contributes also to the draining accompanied by wide spectrum of negative impacts ranging from decrease of underground water supplies to the regional-climate changes.
In addressing the current sombre situation, the Millenium Development Goals define the existing water resources protection strategy as insufficient. Integrated water resources management means holistic approach to watersheds: „to promote the principle of water management throughout the watershed areas completely, i.e. also in areas other than river beds and water reservoirs, thus to create conditions for wider use of biotechnical, agrotechnical and forestry measures… in order to improve the retaining capacity.“ It is the subject of scientific discussions and strategic documents almost in all parts of the world. What we experience, however, is common practice that both water after utilization becomes waste water that should be disposed of as quickly as possible. The result of such an approach’s implementation in reality means that about over 700 billion m3 are splashed from continents annually – of water that in the past seeped into the soil, enriched groundwater, evaporated through the vegetation, stabilized the temperature regimes of landscapes and partially precipitated back through small water cycle. Increase of landscape’s water-holding capacity has to be done with aim to „enhance water sources and flood-prevention by technical measures (building small dams and ponds, polders and weirs), to protect the land against fires and climate change.“
We therefore take here the liberty to criticize the out-of-date investments and obsolete solutions made by institutions responsible for water programs in most of the world. „On one side, throughout the strategic documents, importance of broad-scale land protection and need of integrated watershed management has been declared, on the other side, however, such investments have been proposed that as partial solutions, may bring temporary effects in fulfilling the regional water requirements, but at the same time, they contribute to increasing the desertification and extremes in watersheds, and support droughts and fires, famine and lack of water on the whole…“
In other words, the responsible institutions ignore the broad-scale measures to be done for increase of water holding capacity in watersheds. Current approach to water resources utilzation proves to be unsustainable, even self-destructive for the current civilization. As quick drainage as possible through increased stream bed discharge does not solve the water conservation problem. It is also in contradiction to the good water-management practice, as it causes undesirable drying out of watersheds throughout the year, thus contributing to worsening of the whole situation during droughts.
The current economic crisis that hit the whole world, and the need for new jobs creation in fields that are no competition to the market environment, offer opportunities for solution. According to the European experts, the best international flood-prevention experience dwells in three-level approach : a) rainwater harvesting on the spot where it falls; b) retention of rainwater; and only finally, when first two steps were insufficient, c) its discharge through the river bed. The present New Water Deal mainly deals with the first two steps of rainwater harvesting and rainwater retention that have been overlooked and neglected until now. That means a shift of measures that are currently isolated from the causes of floods – to their prevention. The program provides meaningful work for millions of people in close vicinity of their dwelling place. Their work with mid- to long term effects and low demands on maintanance would aim to restore water resources and decrease the risk of floods and droughts, fires, famine and climate change. Elimination of causes of most water-related problems by increased water-holding capacity in the landscape will mitigate frequency, intensity and impacts of floods and droughts. It brings about also other positive effects such as mitigation of climate change impacts, erosion-prevention, increase of bio-diversity and development of new economic activities and many others.

Water and soil protection, biodiversity and climate change
Due to gravitation, water flows downhill by the way of the least resistance. If the resistance is not sufficient, water quickly increases its kinetic energy and takes with it soil particles, gravel, small stones and organic material. While the erosion and transport of soil are very quick processes, soil creation is a process that is so slow that we can say that soil is a non-renewable source. Our ancestors protected soil against water erosion by all kinds of means: they built various terraces in the landscape, strips of grass, shrubs or trees surrounding the fields. The purpose was to slow down the outflow of rainwater, or to stop it to be gradually seeped in the soil.
Technical measures include saturation ditches digged along contour lines in slopes, depressions, saturation holes, water-holdings, limans, small dams, or weirs at rivers or creeks, in gorges or in gullies, polders and small outflow dams, fire-prevention water reservoirs, ponds etc., that may accumulate rainwater. Technically more sophisticated „constructions“ include various types of small dams in natural streams, streamlets, erosion furrows etc.
The mentioned measures – do not require qualified work in most cases, and are very close to the rural people, who usually suffer from unemployment more that people in cities. The extent and type of flood-prevention or erosion-prevention measures, as well as the volume of water-holding devices, can be defined by the surface run-off and/or rainwater (or water from snow-melting) on the basis of factors such as intensity of precipitation, watershed’s area, and the whole complex of other surface characteristics. In this program proposal we consider creation of water-holding measures with the target retaining capacity of ca 700 billion m3 rainwater annually collected on all continents of the Earth, which according to some evaluations responds to the amount by which the volume of water is decreased in hydrological systems of continents per year. That would essentially contribute to the increase of the water resources management in regions affected by droughts and/or floods. Waterholdings of a total volume about 300 billion m3 on all continents are needed in order to achieve the harvest 700 billion m3 rainwater annually. Such a volume could be created in approximatelly 10 years. We estimate, that one worker can create about 600 m3 waterholdings a year.
However, in order to change all this, we have to change our thinking. It is time to leave behind the old water paradigm that regards rainwater as a burden we want to get rid of. It is time to launch work on the New Water Paradigm principles saying that the rainwater is an asset we want to harvest and utilize. We set a goal to create water-holding elements capable to collect 700 km3 rainwater a year, which would have positive impact on achieving MDG-s with respect to water for people, food and nature, as well as for recovery of climate on all continents. It is achievable in the course of the next ten years. By estimates, the cost of such a program may amount to 250-350 billion EUR annually, and 2.500-3.500 EUR in total. It is interesting to compare the efficiency of production of e.g. one cubic meter water to the existing technologies: the existing investments in technologies of water creation without its recycling require ca 0,3 EUR/m3. The proposed system of integrated water restoration in water cycle requires e.g. in Slovakia’s conditions 0,008 EUR/m3, what is more than 30 times higher efficiency.

Conclusion
The New Water Deal creates conditions for implementation of relatively simple and undemanding works on unprecedented scale. It involves works aimed at conservation of soil, water resources and ecosystems. The area rich in water, soil and vegetation has a growing value, just like area with lesser risk of floods. The inhabitants would easily identify themselves with the project goals. Employment of workers in preparation, implementation and maintenance of erosion-prevention and water-holding measures will create useful jobs. Project would create incentives for the future economic and social growth. Implementation of the program would, by its expenditures, contribute to the growth of GNP by 0,25 % in each year of its implementation.
We regard local communities as the key partners of the program, because they know best their situations both concerning unemployment and human resources, and concerning water conservation needs. The communities also bear most of the consequences of floods or droughts. They are fit to design projects aimed to increase the water-holding capacities on territories of their settlements, as well as to decrease soil erosion.
The authors believe that the implemented works would bring a long-time benefits even after the completing of the projects, just as it occurred in case of similar projects done in frame of the American New Deal. The very increase of retention capacity of land is – regardless the current economic situation – still part of strategic governmental and non-governmental goals. It is also part of internationally promoted principles of good management of natural resources as well as the condition for the environmental and economic safety. The current economic situation only creates more favourable conditions for what has to be done anyway and to what the responsible institutions are bound to act.