Green Guerillas: Retaining water in the desertifying Hungarian lowlands

In six months, there will be another drought in the Great Hungarian Plain (Alföld), and everyone knows. Retaining water is key to saving the drying region, but long-term sustainability requires complex, nationwide solutions. When people don’t have that – when people can’t have that – they do it themselves. A video report shows a collective coming together to block a drainage canal to help mitigate the drought expected in six months.

A wagon was waiting for us on the outskirts of Újhartyán. A smaller group clambered aboard – locals frustrated with how things are, inner-city idealists who believe that they can get better, farmers from the Homokhátság region who had joined the Green Guerilla movement simply because they want to survive. They were armed with shovels and rakes, thermoses and, crucially, bread spread thick with lard – zsíros kenyér, a Hungarian delicacy that is an essential prerequisite to any physical labour. The sandwiches were revealing – this was a collective that wanted to get something done.

In recent decades, large parts of the Great Hungarian Plain (Alföld) have been plagued by droughts that severely impact nature, agriculture and the locals’ lives. The tight-knit group initiative is drawing attention to the extensive network of canals that were once built for drainage but now play a significant role in drying out the landscape – one of the root causes of the problem.

The canal network was constructed across the Great Plain as part of the large-scale water management projects of the 20^th century. The aim – make the land suitable for agricultural cultivation. In the long run, however, the excessive water regulation and canalization have hurt the landscape. The canals diverted water away, lowering the groundwater level and shrinking the wetlands.

Atop the wagon, I spoke with László Kulcsár, a farmer and the founder of the Green Guerrilla Movement.

“We’re carrying out a small-scale water retention project—building a bottom weir from earth in a local canal. I hope this will be the first of many effective, grassroots interventions that pave the way for the thousands more we’ll need to make water retention more than just a buzzword,” he said.

He recalled just how much the area changed – from a drowning risk into a barren land.

“A hundred years ago, cattle would drown if driven onto this land before August—this was a marshy, waterlogged area. The lowlands around Dabas and Ócsa were rich in water until the Danube Valley Main Canal was built in the 1920s. Locals called it the ‘Curse Canal’ because it drained everything away. Since then, drought, crop failure, and unbearable heat have only worsened,” he said.

The damage isn’t irreparable – but an intervention is necessary if anything is to change.

“Water retention can help reverse these trends,” he explained. “Part of the solution is physical intervention—like weirs and dams. The other part is transforming agriculture to match our new climate reality. That means a fundamental shift in how we use the land. In my view, we need to convert about a million hectares of arable land in the Great Plain into water-compatible uses—pasture, silvopasture, fishponds. In places where water accumulates, we should be planting forests. Because out of all land uses, it’s arable farming that’s least compatible with sustainable water management.”

This water retention initiative is a small step, but a step nevertheless toward a solution. Locals are building bottom weirs in the canals to slow water drainage and improve the soil’s ability to retain moisture, contributing to rising groundwater levels, increased biodiversity, and improvements in the local microclimate.

I spoke with activists, Újhartyán mayor József Schulcz and local hunters and farmers about the desertification affecting the area and the importance of water retention. They also appear in the video report.

The fight against desertification has clearly become a shared cause for everyone. Water authorities, local governments, landowners, and hunters alike see similar interventions as a way to mitigate the problem. Water retention and landscape management are no longer just the battle of a small, committed subculture — they are slowly becoming national issues that require regulation and concentrated public policy efforts.

Story, video, cover photo by Gergely Pápai. English translation by Vanda Mayer. The Hungarian version of this story is available here.