Slovak national action plan to combat drought

On 10 October 2017, the Slovak Ministry of Environment held a press conference where a draft of a Drought Action Plan was introduced to the general public.

During the summer of 2017, an inter-ministerial working group was established tasked to prepare the Drought Action Plan. It comprises of experts from the Ministry of Environment, Slovak Hydrometeorological Institute, Water Research Institute, Slovak Water Management Enterprise, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, National Food and Agriculture Centre, Hydro-meliorations, Slovak Technical University, Faculty of Natural Sciences at Comenius University, Office of the Government, Global Water Partnership Central and Eastern Europe, and other institutions.

The Drought Action Plan is a “document providing a menu of targeted measures that will mitigate the negative impacts of drought” (Norbert Kurilla, State Secretary, Ministry of Environment). The Plan focuses mainly on green infrastructure and improvement of water retention in the urban environment, agriculture, forestry, and hydro-morphology, in line with the EU catalogue of Natural Water Retention Measures.

The Drought Action Plan was inspired by the seven steps that are described in the Drought Management Guidelines, developed by World Meteorological Organization and the Global Water Partnership Central and Eastern Europe.

Two international projects supported by Interreg – DriDanube and FramWat projects that deal with drought and efficiency of natural water retention measures will provide a knowledge base for implementation of the measures. DriDanube’s Drought User Service is mentioned as one of the most recent drought monitoring tools based on remote sensing data, as a complementary method to the already existing observation-based monitoring.