The virtues and question marks concerning water resource management

Paál, Sándor

Keywords: inland water, regulation of waterways, water conservation, fuel, legal regulation

Hungary is a low-lying, continental country where excess inland water as well as water shortages are an annually recurring problem. The extreme weather conditions of the recent past have focussed attention on the condition of watercourse channels and the implementation of local – not governmental – water management tasks. Hungary, like Holland, has carried out extensive organisation of its waterways, but this cannot be one-sided, we need to know how to preserve the available water, not just how to drain it away. The role of water as a fuel further increases its economic significance, pushing prudent legal regulation to the forefront.