This crisis is essentially one of poor water governance. But the real tragedy is the effect it has on the everyday lives of poor people, who are blighted by the burden of water-related disease, living in degraded and often dangerous environments, struggling to get an education for their children and to earn a living, and to get enough to eat.

The crisis is also experienced by the natural environment, which is groaning under the mountain of wastes dumped on it daily, and from overuse and misuse, with seemingly little care for future consequences and future generations.

In truth it is attitude and behaviour problems that lie at the heart of the crisis. We know most (but not all) of what the problems are and a good deal about where they are. We have the knowledge and expertise to begin to tackle them. We have developed excellent concepts, such as equity and sustainability. Yet inertia at leadership level, and a world population not fully aware of the scale of the problem (and in many cases not sufficiently empowered to do much about it) mean we fail to take the needed timely corrective actions and put the concepts to work.

For humanity, the poverty of a large percentage of the world’s population is both a symptom and a cause of the water crisis. Giving the poor better access to better managed water can make a big contribution to poverty eradication. Such better management will enable us to deal with the growing per capita scarcity of water in many parts of the developing world.

Solving the water crisis in its many aspects is but one of the several challenges facing humankind as we confront life in this third millennium, and it has to be seen in that context. We have to fit it into an overall scenario of problem-solving and conflict resolution. Yet of all the social and natural resource crises we humans face, it is the one that lies at the heart of our survival and that of our planet Earth.