Determining prospects of european countries’ positive experience implementation into the water consumption process in Ukraine

Abstract

At the stage of Ukrainian transition to the European living standards, one of the main tasks is to prevent the further deterioration of water resources, along with their protection and enhancement. Since 2006 Water Framework Directive has become the benchmark for purposeful improvements towards solving the problems of water resources in Ukraine. Forming the mechanism of sustainable water consumption is one of the conditions of its development. Its main principles are organic and cohesive combination of social and economic problems with ecological ones, the confirmed solving of which will help the society to come at an increased level of living standard: quality of public services, people’s health, life expectancy etc. The objective of this paper is the system analysis of current water consumption state in rural areas of Ukraine, as well as new directions formulation of improving the social and ecological situation. Securing Ukrainian population with drinking water, especially in rural areas, is among the worst in Europe. While conducting the research the economics and statistics methods were used (comparison, statistical monitoring) as well as sociological (interviewing, sociometric polling). Following the statistical data we can conclude that the situation connected with providing rural population with standard quality water by means of arranging the systems of centralized water supply, accompanied by essential engineering constructions necessary for guaranteeing treated, standard quality water does not have positive dynamics. Conducted analysis enables to identify main problems of rural areas water consumption in Ukraine, and determine directions of their solving based on centralized water supply systems. Applying effective mechanisms based on the complex approaches such as active participation of Ukrainian society subjects are necessary to overcome it. It is essential to develop the practice of involving the Ukrainian citizens into solving the socially significant problems while using the European experience, along with making provisions in the budget for citizens initiative support that is aimed at improving water supply on the basis of co-financing.