Date of label : 29/10/2024
Lake in the middle of nature.
Summary
Püspökszilágy (HU) is extremely vulnerable to flash floods and droughts due to its creek catchment area, which is characterised by steep hills that are mainly covered by crops. Huge amounts of sediment can be washed away by flash floods. Since 2006, climate change has intensified this flooding which was rare in the past, causing serious damage to agriculture and infrastructure in the village almost yearly. Meanwhile, the valley floor completely dries out in summer, negatively impacting agriculture and biodiversity.
By building Natural Water Retention Measures (NWRMs), Püspökszilágy has completely stopped flash floods and stabilised the groundwater level, mitigated the risk of water shortages, and increased biodiversity. The municipality now leads NWRMs efforts in the water catchment area through a Stakeholder Platform.
The solutions offered by the Good Practice
Püspökszilágy’s good practice serves as a model for applying Natural Water Retention Measures (NWRMs) in hilly landscapes. These measures are essential for any small and medium-sized settlements facing flash floods, and also droughts. Before installing NWRMs, flash floods caused major economic losses—around EUR 250 000 for infrastructure and EUR 100 000 for agriculture.
Since 2017, however, the building of seven log dams and the renovation of three small stone dams has completely stopped this damage.
A water retention pond (built in 2019) regulates the groundwater and micro-climate, provides habitat for protected species, and acts as a recreational area. New log dams and other NWRMs (e.g. swales, hedgerows, ground dam, ponds), recently built also improve water retention and help with landscape-level irrigation. Furthermore, the municipality’s new project aims to increase the village’s resilience to climate change in a just and fair way, by improving residents’ knowledge, supporting sustainable livelihoods, enhancing mutual support networks, and reframing indigenous knowledge.
These interventions are coordinated by the Water Catchment Area Stakeholder Platform in the territory of nine authorities (210 km2), based on a professional water runoff model.
Building on the sustainable and integrated urban approach
Key aspects of integration are:
- Territorial integration: The coherence of actions implemented by neighbouring municipalities within the water catchment area.
- Sectoral integration: Addressing the full range of sectors active in the area.
The Water Catchment Area Stakeholder Platform in the Püspökszilágy area balances different interests, including those of foresters, farmers, communities, and nature protection groups, and also the environmental, economic and social dimensions of sustainable development.
- Environmental: Water retention creates new habitats and supports existing ones, contributes to the sustainability of forests, decreases agricultural energy use, and enhances the role of wetlands as carbon sinks.
- Economic: The practice has boosted agricultural productivity through water retention and flood prevention, and has increased tourism due to the new recreational area and the thematic educational paths. The NWRMs are also popular sites for school excursions, while universities are involved in monitoring the interventions and capitalising on the knowledge gained.
- Social: The LIFE Co-Clima project aims to increase the village’s adaptive capacity to climate change in a just way.
The Stakeholder Platform operates on land owned by different parties, and will be effective only if stakeholders are fully engaged in identifying potential solutions, and involved in the planning, implementing and monitoring of NWRMs.
Based on participatory approach
Increasing water scarcity in summers, and especially the severe 2022 drought, has increased interest in landscape-level water retention, which the Water Catchment Area Stakeholder Platform addresses.
The NWRMs are in different locations around the water catchment area, on land owned by different stakeholders, requiring cooperation and participation to be effectively implemented. Firstly, experts explain the runoff model and the potential NWRM interventions to stakeholders. Residents, farmers and other groups involved in the Stakeholder Platform discuss the options with experts, and select the most suitable NWRMs to install.
Local stakeholders are also physically involved in the implementation and maintenance of NWRMs. A ground dam can, for instance, be maintained easily by a farmer and a spade, while local groups or individuals can take ‘ownership’ by regularly checking a NWRM, and school classes can ‘adopt’ one to maintain on regular visits.
In addition to their water retention role, NWRMs increasingly support landscape-level irrigation.
What difference has it made?
The most important impact of the small-scale NWRMs (log dams, small stone dams and the retention pond) has been the complete elimination of damages caused by flash floods.
Besides protecting the village from flooding, the water retention pond regulates the groundwater and micro-climate, and provides habitat for species including protected ones, and functions as a recreational area that attracts tourists.
Before the pond started to function, residential wells often dried out during the extremely hot summers, but now people can continue to water their gardens. During the historic 2022 drought, only the Szilágyi creek did not dry out in the region due to NWRMs.
The creation of four monitoring wells (9 m deep) proved that the groundwater level was stabilised at its highest point (1.6-2 m deep), fluctuating only 15 cm, while before it regularly fluctuated 3-4 m. According to the ecological monitoring, local biodiversity increased by 25% around the pond.
The goal of newly-installed NWRMs is more to irrigate land on the landscape level, to benefit the entire population. Meanwhile, the goal of the ongoing LIFE Co-Clima project is to further support the resilience of the village, for example, by creating a deep-mulch community garden including an irrigation pond, water retention measures for households, and schemes to facilitate residents’ mutual support.
Why this Good Practice should be transferred to other cities
Across Europe, drought, heavy rainfall and heatwaves are becoming more frequent. EU policy requires Member States to install water retention measures at all territorial levels. Local forms of government are key actors within small water catchment areas, have direct experience of extreme weather events, and an understanding of the potential resources and strategies to deploy with the involvement of local stakeholders.
Small-scale Natural Water Retention Measures (NWRMs) implement:
- The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): SDG 11 (Sustainable cities and communities), and SDG 13 (Climate action).
- The Urban Agenda for the EU’s priority themes ‘climate adaptation’ and ‘sustainable use of land and nature-based solutions’.
To transfer the good practice, the time needed to get the appropriate permissions has to be taken into account. The practice can be easily adapted to different contexts and landscapes. However, the most important feature remains constant: a coordinator to map the water catchment to identify the best places for interventions, together with stakeholders, especially in the upper part of the area where many small interventions (log dams, hedgerows, etc.) can prevent floods in the lower inhabited part of the area.
Municipalities, at the most-local government level, have a key role to play in developing landscape-level water retention. Many decision-makers are still not aware of the size of the challenge, however, so awareness-raising and changing mindsets are crucial, to enable municipalities to implement these methods to increase climate resilience.
The practice has been broadly disseminated and partly transferred in Hungary, within the LIFE-MICACC and LIFE LOGOS 4 WATERS projects, and many professionals have visited Püspökszilágy to see the NWRMs. According to the MICACC final report, the solutions reached at least 122 local decision-makers in Hungary. Within the LIFE LOGOS 4 WATERS project, 30 additional Hungarian settlements implemented small-scale NWRMs based on the tested model solutions.