SOME CONCEPTUAL PROBLEMS OF FORMING LEGAL REGIMES FOR THE USE AND PROTECTION OF WATER RESOURCES IN TERMS OF ECOSYSTEM DIVERSITY

Abstract

The article is devoted to determining the current peculiarities of regulatory and legal formation of legal regimes for the use and protection of water resources in terms of ecosystem diversity. The author proposes the author’s own approach to differentiating legal regimes of natural resources into three levels, whereby the first level is conventionally called “environmental and legal” (natural resource, integrative) in the narrow sense, since it defines the fundamental environmental and legal principles of regulation of relations in the field of use and protection of natural resources. The author establishes that the second level of legal regulation is characterized by special regulation of relations in the area of use and protection of natural resources by provisions of special legislation, in particular, the Land Code of Ukraine, the Forest Code of Ukraine, the Subsoil Code of Ukraine, etc. In turn, the third level of legal regulation is characterized by “integrated” regulation of relations on the use and protection of water resources as an element of natural ecosystems. This level of regulation of water resources is associated with their integrated legal significance in relation to other natural resources, which is reflected in the relevant provisions of special legislation. This leads to the conclusion that at the level of “object” legal regimes, legal regulation of water resources use faces certain peculiarities, which include, in particular, a largely “land-centered” approach to the regulation of relations on the use of water bodies and the priority of the legal regime of forests over other natural resources, which in a certain way endows the legal regime of use and protection of water bodies with an integrated and accentuated meaning, i.e., on the one hand, makes it an element of the legal regime of land. And only the legal regime of groundwater, due to the loyal attitude to it from the subsoil legislation, gives it a certain autonomy.