The author believes that water is one of the major global issues of the twenty-first century. Much of the social and political instability is due to conflicts over water regime and the consequent instability of food supplies and rural livelihoods. Moreover, as investments in irrigation development decrease, as urban and industrial sprawl spreads over irrigated land, and as increasingly large amounts of water are diverted out of agriculture to other sectors, both the area of irrigated land and the quality of irrigation necessarily decrease. All of these factors reduce the supply elasticity and the responsiveness of food production to random conjunctions of global events, that could create severe food shortages. This paper emphasizes the need to develop new and creative concepts in water management to adequately manage these problems. In Part I, the author defines the generic problem of water management, and shows that it is a much more severe problem than is commonly realized. Part II focuses on the kinds of creative and innovative devices that will lead to real solutions to the problem.