Water is perhaps the world’s most valuable resource - clean water has even been touted as the ‘next oil’. Water has become a strategic (and shrinking) resource, a commodity; indeed, control of water has always been - and remains - a highly politicized affair. This proves as a major challenge as cities and urban areas are gaining an estimated 60 million people per year - over 1 million every week. In many developing countries cities are growing two or three times faster than the overall population. As urban areas - particularly smaller towns and cities - continue to grow in size, about 5 billion people are expected to live in cities by 2030 - about 61 per cent of the global population of 8.1 billion, the UN projects. At present, over 900 million people - almost one in three of the world's urban population - are slum dwellers, and in 30 years’ time that number is likely to double to 2 billion, unless serious action is taken, according to UN-Habitat.