The summer 2019 in Poland was hot and dry. A similar trend was also observed in previous years, so Poles partly got used to the view of extremely low levels of rivers. But at the beginning of June, Skierniewice – a town of 47 000 people, ran out of water. Similar situations, which are expected to happen in Poland repeatedly, undermine the social sense of security, indicating that access to water may be at risk and it cannot be taken for granted. They also trigger discussion on the state’s responsibility to secure water of adequate quality and quantity to meet social and environmental water-related needs, in other words – to provide water security. The purpose of this article is to analyze a complex issue of “water security” in Poland, through the lenses of its general constitutional conditions. The article is divided into four sections. The first section considers the concept of “water security” as a theoretical framework and increasingly significant water governance paradigm; the second one briefly outlines the most pressing water security problems in Poland; the third one is focused on the constitutional characteristics of water security as a special task norm of the Polish basic law; finally, the fourth section analyzes water security as the constitutional right of an individual.

Central Asia is revealing itself as an area where the problem of access to water and its current regional dynamics are almost at a radically critical level, where the potential risk of water disputes is still one of the highest in the world. Therefore, water scarcity issues and challenges triggered by the Aral Sea syndrome, the existing water mismanagement system, infrastructural and investment projects of dams and water reservoirs (Rogun, Naryn, Kambarata, Toktogul, etc.) and their transformation towards an existential threat will be analyzed within the securitization prism through the selected speech acts. This article will contribute to developing a new analytical framework of Regional Security Complex Theory (RSCT) and the securitization theory in water stress. The efforts undertaken in this article will ultimately lead to the development of a new approach to issues of water security and hydro politics within the concept of the Regional Water Security Complex (RWSC) on the example of the Central Asian region. The main research question will be to what extent water, as an immanent feature of this complex, is politicized and securitized. An important question will also be how the formulated security language indicates the existential nature of water as a security problem in the region.