Study On The Legal Problems Of Water Rights Trading In China

The serious shortage of water resource has been the bottleneck of limiting our nation economy and social development. The water rights trading is an efficient way to resolve the water resource crisis. The paper points out that water rights trading must be legislated. The research on the legal problems of water rights trading is regarded as the prerequisite and base of legislation in China.The conception of water rights is discussed in three angles based on the theory of water rights. Firstly, the conception of water rights should be divided into the broad sense and narrow sense. The former mainly refers to the ownership, the rights to the use and the management rights of water resource, etc. the latter only refers to the rights to the use of water resource. Secondly, the water rights are defined as the usufruct. Thirdly, the author also presents the viewpoint that the water rights differ from the environmental rights based on these reasons as follows: on one hand, the water rights and the environmental rights don t come as legal rights simultaneously, on the other hand, the water rights differ from the environmental rights in the subject, the object and the legal characteristic. The above-mentioned standpoints are beneficial to construct the law system of water rights trading.The conception of water rights trading is defined as the legal transfer behavior of the right to the use of water resource in terms of the civil law in the paper, that is, people who use water resource can transfer the right to use water resource gained legally to others through selling, exchanging and other ways. In addition, the paper puts forward the water rights trading is attached to an exchange of commodity. The author thinks that the constitution acknowledges the exchanged of commodity in the resource allocation, therefore the constitution also acknowledges water rights trading involved in the exchanged of commodity. It is the most important legal basis of water rights trading. The above-mentioned standpoints are also beneficial to construct the law system of water rights trading.In addition, this paper introduces the legislation of the foreign water rights trading especially put emphasis on the water rights trading and its legislation in Australia and America, and also interprets the legislation experience of foreign water rights trading.