Water is life. A truth so basic that it is commonplace. Concern about the scarcity of this ''vital element'' is widespread, as many people believe that water will be the detonator of future wars.

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But the problem with freshwater is perfectly easy to understand: 97.5 percent of the water on Earth is salty, and three-fourths of the remaining 2.5 percent are frozen around the North and South Poles. What is left is just 0.01 percent of this precious resource.

Even so, there is the broad impression that this is enough to supply a very large population. But the truth is that freshwater is not well distributed throughout the world, and in many places it is threatened by problems of contamination, squandering and poor infrastructure, as occurs with the dams that affect the basins of some major rivers.

The standpoint of water scarcity has generated a global mobilization, which has as its axis the United Nations. During the first Earth Summit, in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, freshwater comprised an entire chapter in the program of action known as Agenda 21. World Water Day is now an annual event, and currently the UN is preparing a global report on the availability of this life-giving resource