Modern methodological and methodological problems of research on legal regulation of relations on the use and protection of water resources

The article deals with the current methodological and methodological issues of studying the legal regulation of relations related to the use and protection of water resources. The author identifies a strong relationship between the use and protection of water resources which emphasizes not just a combination, but the actual mutual influence of both processes, whereby use is possible only with proper protection of the relevant objects, and as a result, the use itself acquires the characteristics of protection through the qualities of “rationality”, ‘efficiency’, “sufficiency”, etc., in their various combinations in specific cases, or protection outlines the boundaries and determines the nature of use. The author establishes that an ecological and legal study of water resources use and protection can be carried out at two main levels, which, in turn, outlines a possible methodology for analyzing the relevant construction, and therefore variations of the methods of scientific research on this issue. These are the terminological and the substantive levels. At the same time, the distinction between these levels of understanding is determined, among other things, by the circumstances of “out-of-sync” between the relevant phenomena and processes and their terminological equivalents, as well as by cases of misinterpretation of the provisions of natural resource legislation in the course of law application and law enforcement. It is concluded that one of the most effective methods for studying the issue of water resources use and protection may be the systemic method, which, covering the essential and terminological aspects of the issue, provides for a comprehensive consideration of both the relevant terminology of water legislation and the nature of the phenomena and processes denoted by it. The author establishes that the structural and functional aspect of water resources use and protection can be revealed on the platform of the “legal mechanism” which has only recently begun to be used by the science of environmental law, but which has an extremely high potential for achieving the relevant goals, as demonstrated by its application in legal-theoretical, civil and even economic studies.