 of benefits and cost-sharing, and ethical criteria for established priorities related to water must be created. Much contemporary thinking about the value of water includes ethical issues such as water as a social or public good or as a commodity (Gleick, 2004; Tipping, Abdm and Tibaijuka, 2005). This is important as water access is recognised as essential in delivering all eight of the Millennium Development Goals (WHO/UNICEF, 2005). Over the past 100 years, the disparity in wealth and opportunity for development within and between nations has had serious implications for the sense of self-worth and hope of many parts of the world. The threat to the well-off is now not only from a territorially based "enemy". The threat is endemic and contagious, and manifested via international terrorism. Conflicts over water are not solely due to governmental policies, but are at once local, among communities and populations, and global. They frequently involve multinational corporations (directly or indirectly involved in the management or exploitation of water resources) and international monetary and regulatory INFRASTRUCTURE TO 2030: TELECOM, LAND TRANSPORT, WATER AND ELECTRICITY - ISBN 92-64-02398-4 © OECD 2006 5. THE IMPACTS OF CHANGE ON THE LONG-TERM FUTURE DEMAND FOR WATER SECTOR INFRASTRUCTURE bodies. Commentators in this area stress the need to build institutional capacity to help avoid conflicts over water, and to build the capacity within communities to understand the issues and develop shared responsibilities (Hassan, 2001; Cosgrove, 2003; Wolf, n.d.). In technological terms, the mode of delivery of water services must shift from the conventional hard engineering (large new assets) approach to a balanced soft-hard and environmental (or ecological) engineering approach that better considers the viability of local, regional and global regimes and accounts properly for whole-life perspectives. For long term sustainability it will be important to transform the management mode of water systems from "technical fixes" t