While the outbreak of war in Iraq may have disrupted proceedings at the Third World Water Forum being held in Kansai, it also lent them deeper significance.
The Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which flow through what are now Iraq, Syria and Turkey, were the lifelines around which the first civilizations grew; and the region owes much of its past and present turmoil to water.
At the forum in Kyoto, a war of paradigms emerged between the World Water Council, which is the host body, and growing citizens' movements.