The most prominent dispute involving ownership of water is the one between Israel and Palestine. When Israel expanded its frontiers into the West Bank and the Golan Heights in 1967, it took possession of the region's major water sources. It is true that those sources had long been taken for granted and neglected before Israel's take over and the current conflict is about terrorism rather than economic issues. But past peace contacts between Syria and Israel have floundered over tiny swathes of territory important for underground waterways and fresh water remains an issue.

India, which helped East Pakistan to win independence to become Bangladesh in 1971, is still embroiled in bitter disputes with that new nation over river basins and waterways. Some Indians see the disputes as crass ingratitude by the Bangladesh government and people, but the other side sees fresh water rights as vital for its survival.

The Economic Commission for Europe did some of its best work through the worst years of the Cold War in securing agreements on sharing the Danube River between West and East European neighbors across the then iron curtain. That work continues with various projects to use that river for transport and combined efforts to remove pollution, especially after NATO's recent war to save Kosovo.

We may be headed towards an epoch when water will be no less precious for human progress than petroleum is today. One of the positive fallouts of the war in Afghanistan is expected to be the linkage through new pipelines of the vast oil and natural gas fields of Kazakistan, Ubekistan, Tajikistan and south east China to outlets in the Arabian sea.

Kandahar, now the scene of desolation, may grow into a humming metropolis with the only airport in the region with easy access to Central Asia. A few highways, airports and transit revenues from oil and gas transportation across its territories could make Afghanistan's destitution a thing of the past. All it takes is 10-15 years of intelligent effort by people of goodwill to transform the region from Afghanistan, across Pakistan and through to Eastern India.

The Reliance company, by some estimates India's largest private sector conglomerate, is already building a multibillion dollar petrochemical complex in the Rann of Kutch, north of Bombay, and just a short distance from Pakistan's border. Investors, including US collaborators, in the complex would not have taken such enormous risks without a conviction that India and Pakistan will not self-destruct through war despite their current rhetoric over Kashmir.

Russia is keen to develop peaceful collaboration with the European Union and NATO partly because it would like to provide secure and long-term supplies of oil and natural gas to the West. Some experts think that Russia can win half of West Europe's markets within 20 years if the political relationships can be managed successfully and Russia becomes more of a law-abiding democracy.

It is not fanciful to think that within 30 years nations will collaborate to conserve and transport fresh water, like they do currently for oil and gas. Delhi in India is likely to run out of groundwater as early as 2015 and two thirds of China's cities already suffer water shortages. By some estimates, Lake Chad has shrunk by 95% in the past four decades. That is a dramatic tragedy for 20 million people living in the six countries sharing the lake's shores.

In fact, there is no shortage of fresh water supplies on earth. The natural filtration system of the oceans rising into the air and returning to land as fresh water works marvelously well. But fresh water distribution is very uneven and the world's poorest countries have been dealt the worst hands. To bring more equity to fresh water availability, humans may have to help rain bearing clouds through water transportation systems on earth. We will also have to make that fresh water more accessible to the neediest.

We take water for granted and people in the West have access to 150 liters of water each day, compared with people in some developing countries who survive on just a bucket a day. Despite its high mountains, Afghanistan has suffered severe drought for nearly four years and some villagers in the Rajasthan and Gujarat states of India, 500 miles away, have been reduced to starvation rations by droughts of various levels of severity for nearly 15 years.

Meanwhile, countries stretching from Indonesia and Bangladesh to the Caribbean and Florida face typhoons and hurricanes each year. Water seems to be such a simple and familiar matter. Over 90% of our bodies are made up of fluids, but almost nothing seems to be more complex than water. Understanding it involves leading edge science is such mysterious areas as climates made tens of thousands of kilometers above the earth's surface and underground flows hidden tens of kilometers beneath our feet.