Some people learn the value of water only when the well runs dry. That was the case in Somalia, where access to water has become a measure of wealth and status. "The poorer you are, the more you have to pay," says UNICEF's Paganini. "If you are rich you can invest in a well. If you are middle class, you can get a nice-size tank. If you are poor, you have to buy it by the can."

But the dearth of water has taught Somalians lessons in conservation and self-reliance. About 40 km from the abandoned town of Burau, 50,000 of its former residents live in a teeming camp of tents and plastic tarpaulins. The only well at the site was filled with debris during the civil war. Now UNICEF has repaired the well and turned it over to a council of local women.

Water from the well is pumped to a reservoir on the surface and dispensed at five spigots in the camp--for 5� a 20-liter can. Residents line up and pour themselves as much as they can afford. Their money goes to pay for fuel for the generators that power the pumps, and for parts and labor to operate the system. The camp waterworks should soon turn a profit, which is earmarked to pay the salaries of three schoolteachers and two nurses. The system is working efficiently so far, says Paganini, adding that the women managers "are very determined" that the well won't go dry again.

DESPERATE IN THE DUNES
The eternally parched climate of the Middle East has long inspired disputes over water--and creative strategies to support life in the desert. On the long list of grievances between Israelis and Palestinians, water is near the top. Ever since the 1967 Six-Day War, the Palestinians have charged Israel with "stealing" the water that flows through aquifers under the mountains of the West Bank of the Jordan River. More recently the Palestinian Authority has accused Israel of reneging on promises under the Oslo accord to make more water available in the Gaza Strip, where residents get by on as little as 70 liters per day.

Experts have long since concluded that there isn't enough water in the region to maintain even current levels of consumption. And desalinization is still much too expensive--$1 to $2 a cubic meter--to be used as anything but a stopgap. What this means for Israel, says Gershon Baskin, who directs the Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information in Jerusalem, is that the nation will have to give up its dream of self-sufficiency in food. "We shall have to buy more food abroad," he says. "It's easier and cheaper to bring in a container of fruit and vegetables than to bring in a container of water."

Egypt, however, does not buy that premise. Instead, it is pursuing two ambitious new schemes to make its desert bloom. One is the El-Salam Canal, a 242-km waterway already under construction that would create 2,500 sq km of new farmland in the Sinai desert on either side of the Suez Canal. The $2 billion project--planned with help from the World Bank--is scheduled to be completed by the end of this year.

The country's second undertaking, announced in January, is the South Valley Development Project, which would pump 25 million cu m of water a day from the Toshka water basin behind Lake Nasser into a huge desert canal that would initially irrigate 5,000 sq km of farmland. The plan calls for most of the land to be leased out to agribusinesses that would grow high-value crops for export. "This scheme is preposterous, a national fantasy," protests Tony Allan, a water expert at the University of London. Egypt would spend its money better, he adds, by improving irrigation techniques in the Nile delta.