The Water Guardians team, led by ecologist András Németh, was formed from volunteers and operates as a civil community. Local farmers, livestock keepers, geologists, water experts and conservationists will come together for a common cause on the Sand Ridge (classified as a semi-desert zone by the UN FAO in 2004), with the aim of giving water back to the land and keeping the water in the landscape.
With simple tools such as a shovel, a bucket, manual strength and will, they build soil dams in the right place of a water canal to prevent the water from leaving the soil, the landscape, the country.
The historic drought of 2022 has painfully highlighted the need for a review of current water management. The effects of climate change are not only longer and longer periods of drought, but also the extraordinary amounts of rainfall that fall in short periods of time, which the current sewerage system effectively drains out of the country via the Danube and the Tisza. This surplus of water would be useful to compensate for the more arid periods. The combination of a lack of sustained winter snow cover and water wastage over the years has led to a situation in several locations in the Sand Ridge where the groundwater level has dropped to 11 meters and is continuing to fall. The impact of this is no longer only being felt in small-scale farming, but also in large-scale, industrial crop and livestock production, while food demand continues to grow locally and globally.
Increasing demands require ever greater water use, while the region's drying out appears to be ongoing and unstoppable.