The Essence And Significance Of The Principles Of General Water Use Law

Abstract

The right to general water use is traditionally considered as one of the main forms of implementation of environmental human rights, which ensures free access to water bodies to meet vital needs. Its legal nature is revealed through a system of principles that not only outline the general guidelines for legal regulation in the field of water protection and use, but also determine the limits of the exercise of individual rights, the permissible scope of state intervention and the nature of its positive obligations to maintain the availability of water resources. Through the prism of such principles, the interests of the individual, society and the state are coordinated in the process of implementing the right to general water use.

The current state of water resources is characterized by a set of negative factors that directly affect the possibility of implementing general water use, in particular, the deterioration of the ecological state of water bodies, the decline in water quality and the limitation of its actual availability. In combination with extraordinary environmental and social challenges, this necessitates a transformation of approaches to the legal provision of general water use. Under such conditions, the principles that previously performed mainly an orientation function are becoming direct regulators of the implementation of the relevant individual right.

The principles of the law of general water use should be considered as derivatives of the principles of environmental law and natural resource law, which, at the same time, acquire independent content due to the special social, life-sustaining and public nature of water resources. It is through the system of principles that the direction of the legal regulation of general water use, its value orientations and the limits of permissible implementation are revealed.

Under modern conditions of functioning of water resources, not only highlighting the system of principles of the right of general water use, but also rethinking their content and methods of practical implementation is of particular importance. The principles cannot be considered as abstract and unchanging guidelines, separated from the actual ecological state of water bodies, since they determine the parameters of coordination of water availability, requirements for their quality, safety of water use and protection of the public interest, which constitutes the subject matter of this article.