Life began when microorganisms appeared from the seas, life has been sustained by water ever since. Now  as we move into the twentieth century with ten thousand years of gradual progress and many more millennial of rapid development ahead of us one thing has always been there and will be in our history: the importance of water. Not only was water important historically it is still essential today economically, energetically, biologically and environmentally. Moreover its importance is only going to raise in the future. Water is our past and water is our future, the importance of oil is just one of the numerous changes we evolve thorough in the course of time.
Ever since the inception of humans water has been in the midst of all of the great breakthroughs in the constant march towards progress. The very beginnings of progress was borne on the banks of great rivers of the world as the dominant civilizations of the ancient world; from the great Egyptian civilization to the Indus river civilization and Hwang-Ho valley civilization were borne, sustained and developed by the bountiful resources and divers uses of the rivers. The uses included, besides being the only means of irrigation, a great medium for traveling and transportation of goods. In fact the symbolic Gaza pyramids were made possible by the transportation of huge stones through the river Nile. Another great milestone in human history, the great industrial revolution was also inspired and sustained by brilliant application of water in the steam engine. The steam engine, by making mass transportation possible triggered the revolution in industrial production which in turn helped the western world develop at an unprecedented pace. Even today the importance of water is highlighted by the simple fact that major developed cities in the world including New York, California, Miami, Paris, London, Singapore and almost all Australian cities are located on the banks of water sources. Further the fact that 60% of humans live within sixty kilometers of the sea and another sizable chunk live in the banks of rivers and lake basins reaffirm the importance of water in human civilization and development.
While the role of steam engine in fulfilling the energy needs of the eighteenth and nineteenth century was instrumental the importance of water as a viable energy source in the twentieth century is even more significant. Water today is widely used in the production of hydroelectricity which accounts for almost 7% of global energy consumption. In addition to being clean hydroelectricity is also very cheap so for many countries without fossil fuel reserves it is the cheapest medium to produce electricity thus, keeping the economy functioning. Furthermore water is also used in many of the alternative sources of energy touted to replace the fossil fuels within the end of this century. From tidal energy to the geothermal energy; water is a promising medium through which the energy needs of the fossil fuel deprived future is going to be fulfilled. Even today water is an important component in the production of nuclear energy: one of the major sources of power and water is also used in the production of hydrogen fuel which propels rockets into space. Also, with the advancement in technology hybrid vehicles, which can run on mixture of water and gasoline, have become increasingly common and the day when automobiles running completely on water are not too far into the future.
Water is not only a source of alternative energy it is also essential in use of energy and other resources for economic progress. Today water is an indispensable element in all of the economic sectors in the world. The primary occupation of most of the developing world, agriculture is dependent heavily on proper irrigation for proper production of crops. This dependency is corroborated by the fact that without irrigation any crop yield is impossible and a year of bad rains can set back global production levels by as much as 20% creating large scale famine and causing widespread deaths. Even in industries, which sustain much of the developed world, water plays its vital role. Furthermore, more than a fifth of world water consumption in the world is for industrial usage including mostly as a coolant in almost all of the industrial machinery and as an important chemical component in the extraction of fossil fuels and most metallurgy processes. In addition nearly seven tenths of the industrial and agricultural productions are transported through water, through the seas. This mainly takes place because the sheer volume of goods that the large ferries can transport on one go is enormous and the technicalities involved in transportation through sea is nonexistent compared to the tedious travel via air and land. Another sector dependent heavily on water bodies is tourism: water sports including rafting are one the favorite activities to do while on vacation, islands like in the Caribbean are the most popular tourist destinations in the world and recently activities like exploring the majestic sea beds of coral reefs and surveying the fascinating wildlife on the watershed areas have raised the importance of water even higher. The fact that even countries without fossil fuel reserves can reap the benefits of water tourism increases the importance of water in the economic system. Also economies in the Middle East which traditionally have been fully dependent on oil revenues have begun to diversify their economies though water tourism among other things. This phenomenon just establishes the supremacy of water over oil in the long run.
In terms of supremacy water reigns in one area where oil can never trespass: the sustenance of life and our planet as we know it. Water, from where life was borne in the first place, along with air is the constant element needed for the survival of all living creatures; in fact humans cannot go without water for more than a week at the very most. It is needed in almost all of the body processes and also maintains biological parameters within the survival limits. This maintenance function of water also extends to a global scale: it regulates the temperature of the earth, and also plays an important role in the environmental cycles like the carbon and nitrogen cycles. Furthermore, the oceans have been acting as carbon sinks and thus mitigating the horrific effects of global warming, caused not surprisingly by burning of oil.
Water has been solving many of the world’s problems; however it has also been an important forefront of many international confrontations and disasters for humanity. First, water borne natural disaster occurs frequently in many parts of the world, mostly with devastating effects. Every year floods and landslides wreck havoc around the world ruining the lives of many, most notably the damage caused by the flooding in New Orleans in 2006 after hurricane Katrina was so overwhelming that even the United States federal government was unable to cope with it; the city is still recovering from that horror. In Nepal too floods and landslides damage property, crops and kill many people every year. For instance the whole country was split into two when the Koshi River breached its embankments recently: that flood had devastating effects on the whole national economy. Also the lack of water or droughts has plagued the African continent for a long time which not only is a human disaster but also the social system has disintegrated into chaos. The bursting of glacial rivers is even more devastating. But the devastation brought about by the wars fought out at sea probably has never been matched by nature. Since the ancient times ship battles have killed many and even in the first and second world wars ships and submarines featured quite heavily in battle. The battle on the political arena is also features a lot of disputes over water management and utilization. While the sharing of rivers has been one of the oldest issues of political confrontation effects of large dams has come into the limelight recently. The former include historically, Major Rivers like the River Nile for which the east African countries fight and the Amazon River in South American, recently the disputes over river sharing issues between India and Nepal has become extremely bitter. The latter however is even more controversial with every new large dam causing an international outcry, a change of internal government and displacement of many communities of people, some of which have lived in the same place for thousand of years. In extreme cases like in India social movements and revolts have arisen out of the wreck of large dams.
In light of all these insights the importance of oil appears to be extremely swallow and insipid. Oil has never bought the world together ironically the world has never been divided for oil either, both of the functions which water performs regularly. In fact the only major importance of oil, in the running of the vehicles will shortly and surely be refuted by time itself for the world will run out of it within the next fifty years. Then to the rescue one more time will be water.
Water divides the world and unites it; all while sustaining all life forms and facilitating progress of humans by playing indispensable part in every aspect of modern life and ever step of development along the way. Water is not only a resource it is a life aid: we travel on it, we consume it, we fight over it, we harness power from it and finally we survive on it. Thus oil was never as important as water; it is not as significant as water today and it has no future. Water on the other hand has been all of our past, is essential component of our present and most of our future.