Oxfam's Geoff Graves took me to Madama, a Palestinian village near Nablus, where neighboring Israeli settlers poisoned the village's only well and shot at aid workers who came to clean it.
Most villagers now buy water from passing tankers, but not all can afford it. Ahmed Qot, a poor farmer, told me he spends three hours every day carrying pots on his donkey to get water from a nearby village for his nine children and five farm animals.
In my travels, I found massive waste and misuse and misappropriation of water, but I also found huge potential to manage things better. I visited inspiring villages across India and China where they are reviving ancient methods of capturing the rain as it falls. I met farmers who use perforated bicycle inner tubes as a cheap method of irrigating their crops from meager water supplies.
And I went to communities in Syria that still rely on thousand-year-old tunnels, known as qanats, that deliver underground water by gravity. I met engineers who want to tear down the dams and give the water back to wetlands and fisheries. And I met citizens demanding a "new water ethic," based on ecology and sustainability and sharing.
I took to using the phrase wherever I went, and it seemed to strike a common chord from Spain to India and China to the US. Maybe it is time to hear it in Britain, too. We might start with the Vale of the White Horse.
Fred Pearce is the author of When The Rivers Run Dry.
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