Good morning.
At the moment, I am experiencing stage fright, because I am a so-called reincarnated technocrat
and I'm supposed to talk rather about water and life.
I studied dams. I wanted to study visual arts and then architecture,
but life had something different in store for me.
Somehow I ended up studying dams.
So after school, I started thinking,
what to do with my life.
So I went to the Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Hydrology,
where my understanding of water started to differ slightly from usual viewpoints.
That was back in the 80s.
And life played a prank on me,
as I ended up being unemployed during socialism.
So only after socialism, I began to deal with some of those correlations,
that I'd like to bring forth to you.
The whole story began in the region of Tichý Potok,
small village, with around 400 inhabitants.
Now, they're fewer.
At that time, the village was traumatised by a dam construction.
And as I studied dams,
I should be passing down what I was taught.
However, my colleagues and I have suggested an alternative.
It was called the Blue Alternative
and here are a few pictures showing what we basically did.
One typical example:
With volunteers, we did such ludicrous things
that were ridiculed back in those times.
And here is the result: recovered landscape.
If we consider last year and basically the past years,
how it's being done, it's not easy at all.
The entire agenda was then put in place in moved to the Tatras,
where we mobilized many people,
lots of young people, volunteers from 26 countries
to recover the nature in the Tatras.
Instead of planting trees,
we basically did stuff like
leaving water in the land,
because where's water, there is life.
New life grows there
creating favourable living conditions for us all.
And as we,
the water management people and technocrats
designed such systems,
as you can see here- sealed ground surface.
That is our philosophy, using such infiltration ditches or trenches.
The whole philosophy of drainage,
of sending the water away
resulted to some extent
in last year's traumatising floods.
Most probably you know this, the whole system
where we somehow forgot about the water.
It´s oriented towards the change of substance and energy flow
in natural ecosystems.
Causing that from this concrete sealed up surface,
water doesn't evaporate,
the water that would otherwise cool the environment,
transforms into sensible heat.
And actually, here is the truth about the trails in the Carpathians,
if we take the entire Carpathian Arc,
all this water and rain drops run by these trails,
flowing away, create
catastrophic floods in locations where we live.
The outcome is very unfavourable,
what is in certaiun way bad news,
because all these structures in the landscape persist,
but for example in forests,
there are 200 to 300 000 kilometres of forest trails
bringing water onto our heads.
Furthermore, this is what I don´t want to hold back anymore.
This is one picture,
basically a bunny with a closed mouth,
so this is why I am delighted
to be given the opportunity to speak in front of you
and actually not only to deliver subjects about bad news,
but also to tell you how it could be.
This is Slovakia in the 21st century
and actually all the extremely heavy rainfalls concentrate
in mountain regions and as luck would have it,
in plains there is less rain and it turns out
that it's the result of the change in energy flows in the atmosphere
caused, paradoxically, by desiccation.
Because energy, may I remind you that
we were in space and at the beginning of life
during prior talks today,
that means the principle that exists here,
sun rays pour into the land,
if we have water- if we have enough water in the land,
the major part of this energy transforms
into latent vapour heat,
or cumulates in the evaporated water into the atmosphere.
If we desiccate the land,
that means the major part of the energy
transforms into sensible heat,
what creates so called „heat islands“,
such as Bratislava, Košice, Vienna, Budapest, London, San Francisco
and maybe even my birthplace.
That means that the whole principle
is in „the heat island effect“
that is pushing clouds into the mountains,
where clouds run over in more extreme cases
causing a catastrophy.
So the new essence of this knowledge is
that the water running from above into the plains continues to flood us,
but at the same time, water basically runs upwards
because we're driving the clouds into the mountains.
And for this reason, it rains less in the plains
and more in the mountains,
as is the insight gained from the situation all over Slovakia.
And why is that so?
Because our values regarding water protection are reversed.
And actually we continue to learn in our schools and universities
all these principles,
which means we are heading downwards.
The key here is the rain drop
and as we have forgotten
that we need most of the water to soak into the soil
and more to evaporate, it does not work any longer.
Less water soaks into the land,
less evaporates,
resulting in less water
recycled in small water cycles,
which leads to extreme weather phenomena:
extremes causing catastrophies, tornados,
natural disasters, abrupt temperature shifts,
rapid weather changes,
let's say from 30 to 5 degrees Celsius
and vice versa and bunch of other things,
chaotic turbulences in the atmosphere,
which are caused precisely by the shortage
of water vapour in the atmosphere.
Well, that was the bad news.
The good news is that there is a simple solution to this problem
because the more water is saturated and infiltrated into the land,
more water evaporates
and is recycled in the system
and as a result the extremes disappear.
Then it rains more,
but it's soft precipitation,
for in the morning, the water evaporates
and in the afternoon, a few drops can sprinkle down,
which is more manageable and not what we experienced last year
and have experienced at least over the past twenty years.
So it's clear it should turn all around.
It's typical for Slovakia
that we have 2 reversed pyramids.
One is the building of Slovak Radio,
the other is a part of the municipality office in Košice in part Terasa,
a tiny, also reversed, pyramid.
So we should start from the drop, and if we make sure
the drops saturate, soak into the soil,
then we've taken care of the ecosystems,
our rivers are stable and don't pose a threat to us.
And that makes our life easier
and such problems are a thing of the past.
We called it all the New Water Deal,
borrowed from former American president Roosevelt,
who initiated the New Deal during the economic crisis in the 30s
and one its branch went to country's recovery.
So the principle is very simple.
More water in the land, more saturated water into the soil,
more evaporated water, more soft clouds,
more rain in the system,
stable and light, not the dramatic kind we're used to.
And here are some of those inspiring ideas
that might encourage you.
Rain water can be left in so-called rain gardens.
That system is very easy,
from the roof up to green surfaces.
Instead of those concrete
or concrete and asphalted surfaces,
we should keep the water in the land
and on green surfaces, so that the water can evaporate
and cool off the environment.
Or systems like these, so that you have a better overview.
That's basically more inspiration in our surroundings...
Recently our friends from the Technical University in Berlin
have put these things in practice, on the square Alexanderplatz and other locations.
For your information, that is all rain water.
This means that the water coming down on us from the sky
stays in the land, makes our environment more pleasant, cools it down,
and we don't have such weather extremes.
A number of technical and technological issues can be solved,
for example when building roads,
how to provide space for the rain water to be absorbed
in those places where trees grow.
We're sending it all down the sewers,
for instance, from Bratislava,
20 million cubic metres per year are drained,
which means, if we take that amount
and recalculate it into energy flows into the atmosphere,
then Bratislava releases
14 000 gigawatt hours of heat into the atmosphere,
which amounts to around a 5-month production
of all power plants in Slovakia for that period.
By draining and sending water away,
Slovakia produces 175 000 gigawatt hours per year.
amounting to a 5-year production of all electricity
our power plants generate,
so allegedly, there is an energy crisis.
This is another inspiring idea,
how to implement it in urbanism and architecture.
The so-called water architecture might be interesting in this connection,
how to figure out a specific solution to the problem,
meaning for example this case
and here is the place for rain water, very simple,
so it can be also next to a family house.
And that is actually my conclusion,
I still have 1:17,
so basically, if we have heart, if you have a heart, dear friends,
I would implore you to keep rain water in the land,
for all water here coming from the rain
and from water, new life emerges.
As the amniotic fluid,
we depend on all water,
it´s the only thing in the world
we depend on
in order to have stable weather, stable ecosystems
because who eliminates water, eliminates life.
As far I know, there is Penalty Act.
So when somebody takes a life,
the one is punished and sent to prison.
Dear friends, my question is than
why we, who annihilate water,
are not punished for annihilating life?
So I thank you very much
and I would like to ask you
to make use of your own various solutions,
whether in your home,
or in your company,
and retain rain water where it falls.
That's our perspective and our main message.
Thank you very much.