Water policy and legislative responses to climate change in the Czech Republic

ABSTRACT

The recurring floods and droughts in the Czech Republic show that climate change requires far-reaching changes in water management. We analyse the responses already reflected in Czech water policy and legislation at three levels: strategic, statutory and constitutional. We first describe the substantial changes that have been satisfactorily introduced into the Czech government’s policies. We then trace the far less successful developments in the law, which have so far essentially been limited to drought plans and restrictions on water extraction during droughts. At the core, we concentrate on the political attempts to constitutionalize water protection.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change
• water policy
• water legislation
• Czech Republic
• constitutional protection of water
• drought
• water reservoirs

Author contributions

H.M.: conceptualisation and design of the study; drafting the introductory and concluding parts of the article; co-development of the sections on the strategic, statutory and constitutional levels; critical revision of the paper. T.S.: development of the section on the constitutionalizing of water protection; critical revision of the paper. J.Z.: development of the sections on the strategic and statutory levels; critical revision of the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the Czech Academy of Sciences [Research Programme Strategy AV21 ‘Water for Life’], and under the Lumina quaeruntur award of the Czech Academy of Sciences for the project ‘Climate Law’ conducted at the Institute of State and Law.