http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2008/05/29/is-water-becoming-%e2%80%98the-new-oil%e2%80%99/ 
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By Mark Clayton | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor / May 29,
2008 edition
Public fountains are dry in Barcelona, Spain, a city so parched there's a
€9,000 ($13,000) fine if you're caught watering your flowers. A tanker
ship docked there this month carrying 5 million gallons of precious fresh
water - and officials are scrambling to line up more such shipments to
slake public thirst.
Barcelona is not alone. Cyprus will ferry water from Greece this summer.
Australian cities are buying water from that nation's farmers and building
desalination plants. Thirsty China plans to divert Himalayan water. And 18
million southern Californians are bracing for their first water-rationing
in years.
Water, Dow Chemical Chairman Andrew Liveris told the World Economic Forum
in February, "is the oil of this century." Developed nations have taken
cheap, abundant fresh water largely for granted. Now global population
growth, pollution, and climate change are shaping a new view of water as
"blue gold."
Water's hot-commodity status has snared the attention of big equipment
suppliers like General Electric as well as big private water companies
that buy or manage municipal supplies - notably France-based Suez and Aqua
America, the largest US-based private water company.
...
Water and war: Will scarcity lead to conflict?
Cherrapunjee, a town in eastern India, once held bragging rights as the
"wettest place on earth," and still gets nearly 40 feet of rain a year.
Ironically, officials recently brought in Israeli water-management experts
to help manage and retain water that today sluices off the area's
deforested landscape so that the area can get by in months when no rain
falls.
